


act iii: the Force shall free me

by hakyeonni



Series: the man with starlight in his soul [3]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic, VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Angst, Character Death, Dialogue Heavy, Gen, Inappropriate Use of Lightsabers, M/M, the kpop/star wars crossover no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 15:15:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9497948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hakyeonni/pseuds/hakyeonni
Summary: sanghyuk and taekwoon, together with hongbin, set off across the galaxy to hunt down taekwoon's mortal enemy: the sith lord jaehwan. not only does taekwoon have to fight for his life against his former friend, he also has to battle his past, which threatens to consume him at every turn...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A quick note about dates in this act:
> 
> The Treaty of Coruscant, in 3653 BBY, serves as an anchor point for this fic—everything is dated in reference to it, if it was before or after, et cetera. The present, where the plot is moving forward, is the year 3644 BBY, nine years after this treaty was signed. The way I've set it out is (hopefully) self-explanatory!
> 
> (It's counting down because BBY stands for Before the Battle of Yavin—aka when the first Death Star blew up at the end of _A New Hope_ , the first Star Wars movie. As such, every date before 0 BBY is counting down towards that event rather than up).

**_3649 BBY_ **   
**_4 years since the Treaty of Coruscant_ **

“Hyung! Hyung!”

Taekwoon sighs. He doesn’t know how many times he’s told Jaehwan not to bother him while he’s meditating—probably hundreds over the course of all the time they’ve known each other, which feels like forever since he’s grown up with Jaehwan by his side. _Hyung_ , a word from some dead language they’d found while studying together in the Temple one day when they were nine—the Temple that currently lies in ruins on Coruscant—means _brother_ , and they had promptly adopted it as a nickname for each other. Taekwoon did some further study and found that it was generally only to be used for _older_ brothers, and Taekwoon is only three months older than Jaehwan; when he’d told Jaehwan that, he’d scoffed and said it was a dead language so there was no one around to protest, and that was that.

“What?” He turns irritably, whipping his head around too fast so his Padawan braid smacks him in the eye. “Ow. What do you want?”

They’ve estimated another two years for completion of the new Temple, on a planet called Tython that Taekwoon had taken an immediate dislike to. As such, the Jedi are making their home in ramshackle housing near the construction site that had seemingly sprung up overnight. It’s not attractive and it’s certainly not sturdy, but it does, for the time being. Taekwoon is meditating in one of the rooms dedicated to that exact purpose, quiet and dark but lacking the fine finishings of a real Jedi Temple. Well, he had been, until Jaehwan had interrupted him.

Jaehwan’s eyes are bright, and he has a grin stretched over his face so wide it looks like it hurts. “Master Satele said we’re gonna be knighted today!”

There’s a beat of silence as Jaehwan’s words sink in, but then Taekwoon is getting up off his feet to yank Jaehwan into a hug, laughing. It took them long enough. It’s been four years since the Treaty was signed, and they’d both assumed they would be knighted not long after that for their actions in the War. But miles of red tape and the impossibility of bureaucracy stood in the way, so they had remained Padawans without Masters for four whole years. Oh, sure, the Council kept an eye on them, and sent them on missions, but otherwise they’d just had to rely on each other. “I can’t believe it!” he gasps, pulling back and grinning wildly at Jaehwan.

“It’s about time,” Jaehwan replies archly. “For four years we’ve been cleaning up the Council’s shit. I thought they would never recognise that.”

Taekwoon claps a hand over Jaehwan’s mouth, alarmed. “Don’t say that!” he urges, his eyes wide. It frightens him when Jaehwan says things like that, which he’s begun doing more often as of late. It’s almost like he’s disillusioned with the Order, which almost freaks Taekwoon out to even think. The Order is all they know. They were both taken from their families when they were three to be trained as Jedi. To be disillusioned with it is to be disillusioned with _life_.

“It’s true,” Jaehwan glowers, jerking his head back and frowning. “When do you think the Council is going to properly thank us for all we’ve done? We haven’t even had Masters for the past four years. They _forgot_ about us.”

A chill runs through Taekwoon, but he suppresses it desperately, shaking his head. “That’s not true. Master Satele wanted to take you on, remember? But that was just after she became Grand Master, and the Council disagreed…”

“I wouldn’t have said yes, anyway,” Jaehwan shoots back. “We stick together, always. Now come on. Let’s get these braids chopped off.”

Glumly, Taekwoon lets himself be led away by Jaehwan, lost in his own thoughts. The Council didn’t forget about them, he knows that. But Jaehwan is so stubborn sometimes… He would have kicked up a stink if one of them got a new Master and the other didn’t. Perhaps that’s why they just left it. He doesn’t know if that’s a better solution—but then, he’s not a Master, and the ways of the Masters are often a mystery.

Taekwoon should be feeling overjoyed that he’s no longer a Padawan. But instead, as Grand Master Satele slices through his braid, he watches it fall to the floor and tries to ignore the horrible feeling in his stomach. He can’t help feeling that something bad is going to happen, very soon, and he doesn’t even know why.

 

**_3644 BBY_ **   
**_9 years since the Treaty of Coruscant_ **

Taekwoon watches as Satele slices through Hongbin’s braid, watches as it falls to the floor, and feels nothing.

It’s strange to be on the other side of the ceremony. Last time it was in a ramshackle, imitation Council chamber. Satele had brought them before the Council—or what remained of it, after Coruscant—and had performed the ritual. He still remembers Jaehwan’s smile, remembers looking up and catching Satele’s gaze. She looked troubled, and it just reflected what he was feeling at the time.

This is entirely different. Now there are eight Masters, and Taekwoon, all arranged in a semicircle around Hongbin (Master Oric Traless having been promoted to the Council recently). Taekwoon is only there because Hongbin is his Padawan; once upon a time he longed to be on this Council, wanted it more than he wanted breathing. That was a different man, though, one who still had faith. Taekwoon is running low on that as of late.

“Rise, Knight Hongbin,” Satele says, her low voice reverberating through them all.

As is tradition, Taekwoon bows his head with the rest and recites the Jedi Code, feeling nothing for the words where once they filled him with such wonder.

“There is no emotion, there is peace.”

He blinks to get Sanghyuk’s face out of his head. _Not here._

“There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.”

This Code is what he has been defined for as long as he can remember.

“There is no passion, there is serenity.”

And yet now he can barely stand to hear it.

“There is no chaos, there is harmony.”

Perhaps Jaehwan was right.

“There is no death, there is the Force.”

Perhaps the Code isn’t the answer after all.

//

The moment Hongbin slips out of the Council chambers Sanghyuk grabs him by the wrist and tugs him into a hug, squeezing the life out of him and feeling Hongbin’s arms come around him to do to the same. “Holy shit! You did it!” he says, breaking away and grinning widely at Hongbin—who somehow looks older without his braid. “You’re a proper Jedi now.”

“Oh, yeah, because I was only a pretend Jedi before,” Hongbin replies with a pout—but then he’s grinning and pulling Sanghyuk into another hug. “I can’t believe it. I thought Master Taekwoon would _never_ let me finish my trials.”

Like most Jedi rituals, the trials are a bit beyond Sanghyuk’s understanding—and since he never has to go through them, he doesn’t really care to know the details. All he knows is that a Padawan must pass five of them to become a Knight. Then they spend a whole twenty-four hours meditating in some back room of the Temple, before they attend the ceremony where their braid gets chopped off in front of the whole Council and their Master. It seems overly ritualistic to him, but the Jedi are all about their rites. “Do you know what they’re gonna do with you now? You can go on solo missions, can’t you?”

“Yeah, but there’s no way I’m leaving you two. I’ll talk to Master Satele. I’m sure she won’t mind.” Slinging an arm around Sanghyuk’s neck, Hongbin leads them away from the huge double doors, down the ramp towards the main entrance. His face turns grim. “I promised Master Taekwoon I would see this thing with Jaehwan through to the end… and I meant it.”

“He’s not your Master anymore,” Sanghyuk replies absentmindedly.

He can feel, through the Force, that Taekwoon feels… empty. Not exactly what you’d expect him to feel after his Padawan was knighted, and he wishes he could dig deeper. The bond between them has grown deeper in the past two months, since they left Nar Shaddaa—God knows why, because Sanghyuk doesn’t claim to be an expert on the Force—but all it means is that he can read Taekwoon more easily, not with any more depth.

Hongbin looks at Sanghyuk, his eyebrow raised. “He’ll be fine. You know how he gets in his moods,” he says, picking up on Sanghyuk’s worry for Taekwoon. “Come on. I think I deserve a drink after that.”

Trying to shrug off his worries, Sanghyuk elbows Hongbin in the side. “You mean you’ll have a lemonade while I have a Tatooine Sunset. I know a good bar a few parsecs over.”

“Don’t drag me to the Outer Rim again, _please,”_ Hongbin groans. “I barely survived last time.”

Sanghyuk barely remembers ‘last time’, but from what he can gather he dragged them both to some cantina on Mandalore, got so drunk he started a fight with a Mandalorian—and not someone just wearing the armour, like him; no, an honest-to-god Mandalorian—and he’d only avoided certain death because Taekwoon had stepped in. Who knew he was fluent in Mando’a? He apparently knew Huttese, too, but Sanghyuk hasn’t had a chance to test him on that.

“Okay, fine,” he replies as they spill outside, the sunlight hitting their faces. “We can go somewhere respectable. Coruscant, or Corellia. Ord Mantell. The possibilities are endless.”

“Not with Taekwoon around,” Hongbin grumbles.

Rolling his eyes, Sanghyuk tugs Hongbin towards the rows of speeder bikes, parked next to the Temple for the Jedi to use as they traverse the planet. “Okay, fine. We’ll get Taekwoon’s permission. But in the meantime… Race ya!”

He makes it to a speeder bike just before Hongbin, and manages to start it up and twist the throttle as Hongbin is still struggling to get his leg over. He roars away in a cloud of dust and is halfway up the path leading to the Academy when he hears the hum of another engine, and laughs, forgetting his worries temporarily.

//

“Hey, are you alright?”

It’s a moot, stupid question, since he can feel that Taekwoon isn’t alright. Whatever was on his mind at Hongbin’s knighting ceremony is still weighing on him, a full day later. They’ve just reached the upper reaches of Tython’s atmosphere, and the moment Taekwoon got up and walked away from the throttles Sanghyuk pounced and dragged him around a corner, which is where they are now.

Taekwoon reaches for him automatically and Sanghyuk leans into him, the way their bodies fit together feeling just as right as it usually does. “Hongbin’s ceremony brought back a lot of memories,” he murmurs, and his hands tighten in the fabric of Sanghyuk’s shirt.

 _Memories of what?_ he wonders, not daring to ask. Instead he just tilts his face up to land a kiss on Taekwoon’s lips, tucking a stray strand of hair behind his ear. “I understand. Is there anything to do to help?”

“You are helping just by being yourself, nau'kara.” Taekwoon smiles gently at Sanghyuk and cups his cheek.

It’s been two months, but every single time Sanghyuk wakes to Taekwoon wrapped around him he still has to pinch himself to remind himself that it’s _real_. The year without Taekwoon had stretched on and on until he was sure it was never going to end, but now things are moving so fast it’s like he blinks and a week has passed. He wants to savour things with Taekwoon, but it’s so hard to do when they’re being bombarded with updates about their mission and messages from Tython and Hongbin… The only time they get to themselves is at night, when Hongbin’s sleeping.

“I love you,” he breathes, closing his eyes and just existing with Taekwoon.

“I love you too. And I want you to know that—”

Whatever Taekwoon is about to say is cut off by the sound of a loud, blaring alarm, one Sanghyuk’s never heard before but one that fills him with dread regardless; alarms are rarely something to celebrate. He can’t even ask before Taekwoon whirls out of his arms, heading towards the bridge, and it’s all he can do to follow in his wake, feeling slightly sick.

Hongbin’s peering at a console set into the wall slightly away from the main control area, but he quickly gets out of the way for Taekwoon, catching Sanghyuk’s eyes. His expression is grim, focused, which Sanghyuk takes to mean _danger_ and hesitates, his hands settling on his blasters automatically, even though the skies ahead are clear and the danger doesn’t appear to be immediately present. Taekwoon hits a button to silence the alarm, but doesn’t move otherwise, his shoulders drawn up towards his ears.

“Taekwoon?” Sanghyuk says, trying not to let too much concern creep into his voice—Hongbin doesn’t know about them, and they need to keep it that way, for obvious reasons. It’s hard to stay calm, though, when all he feels through the Force is an awful maelstrom of feelings that he can’t even begin to read. “What’s wrong?”

With another tap on the console, the galaxy map in the middle of the room enlarges, and begins zooming in: the Core Worlds; the Alderaan sector; the Alderaan system; and finally Alderaan itself is blown up in the middle of the room, inked in the milky blue light of the holoprojector. The horrible realisation hits him at the same time that Taekwoon turns, all the blood drawn from his face, and stares at his home planet. He looks grey, and his shoulders are hunched, and Sanghyuk longs to comfort him but clenches his fists instead.

“Jaehwan. He’s on Alderaan.”

 

**_3659 BBY_ **   
**_22 years since the start of the Great Galactic War_ **   
**_6 years until the Treaty of Coruscant_ **

“Do you think we’ll ever see our families again?”

Jaehwan’s voice is quiet, just barely a whisper, and Taekwoon rolls over to face him in order to be able to hear him better. In the moonlight, streaming in through the window of their dorm, he can just barely make out the curve of Jaehwan’s cheek—and from what he can see it’s wet, like he’s been crying.

“Why are you thinking about that now?” Taekwoon replies, slightly bewildered. “It’s been years…”

Seven years, in fact—they are both ten now, and they were both given to the Order when they were three. Or so they are told. It’s not like Taekwoon can imagine back that far. He only has the ghost of a memory of his mother’s face, and can’t remember anything of his father at all; it doesn’t bother him too much, mainly because he’s too busy training and studying. But Jaehwan… He didn’t realise that his thoughts were straying to his family.

“Because soon we’ll be picked by a Master and become Padawans,” Jaehwan sniffs. “And then things will change again. What if we get separated? I can’t lose you too.”

“You won’t lose me,” Taekwoon vows, sitting upright in bed and frowning. “I won’t let them take you away. We stick together, no matter what.”

“No matter what,” Jaehwan echoes, pulling the blankets up a little bit more. “I’m scared, hyung.”

They’re both too young to really understand what the War means, only that they live its reality every day; all the adults are stressed, and pay less attention to the Younglings than they should. Taekwoon wishes he could follow what the Masters mean when they talk about the Sith. He’s never met one before, and they sound absolutely terrifying. But Jaehwan doesn’t have to be scared. The Temple is the safest place in the galaxy. There’s nothing that can hurt them here.

Taekwoon smiles in Jaehwan’s direction and pushes his hair away from his face—they’re all starting to grow it long, in preparation for the Padawan Trials in three years, so they can create their braid. “I’ll protect you, hyung. You know that.”

“I know,” Jaehwan says, and he sounds a little more sure, a little less upset.

 

**_3644 BBY_ **   
**_9 years since the Treaty of Coruscant_ **

“What the fuck do you mean he’s on Alderaan?” Sanghyuk yells, to no one in particular, since both Taekwoon and Hongbin are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. “How can he be there? Isn’t it a Republic world?”

A message flashes up on a console next to him, and on autopilot he opens it: _have you even picked up a history book recently? Alderaan seceded from the Republic nine years ago, after the Treaty was signed. There’s a civil war that’s been raging since._ At first he has no idea who the hell he’s talking to, but when he looks to his right he sees T7 plugged into the ship’s computer and narrows his eyes. “Hey, nine years ago I was on the run from the law. I wasn’t exactly paying attention to the state of galactic politics, okay?”

 _Excuses!_ reads the message, and Sanghyuk grits his teeth and turns away from the console lest he starts swearing—and he hasn’t stooped as low as to lose his temper at a droid, at least not yet. Instead he wanders down the hall to his room, staring at his armour and wondering what the hell all of this means. Why would Jaehwan go to Alderaan, after all these years? Surely his intentions must be anything but pure. Perhaps he’s after his family. Perhaps he’s after Taekwoon’s.

When he wanders back to the bridge, he finds Hongbin sitting in the captain’s seat, speaking lowly to… someone. Republic Fleet command, probably. “This is the _Vanguard_. We have reports of _Shadow IV_ entering Alderaan’s orbit. Requesting confirmation and further instructions, over.”

“What does this mean?” Sanghyuk comes up behind him and peers at the console.

Hongbin looks up, and he looks worried, his lips turned down into a frown. “Master Taekwoon has an alarm set up to notify him whenever Jaehwan’s ship exits hyperspace. Most of the time it’s silent, because the slippery bastard has stealth drives that he uses nearly all the time. All we know is his ship came out of hyperspace near Alderaan.” He shakes his head, his face grim. “If it’s true… This is bad. Alderaan’s civil war is messy enough without the Sith pulling the strings.”

“ _Vanguard_ , this is the Republic Fleet, come in, over.”

Hongbin leans forward, pressing a button on the console. “I read you, Republic Fleet, over.”

“We can confirm that _Shadow IV_ came out of hyperspace in the Alderaan system. Intentions unknown. Continue on current mission trajectory. _Vanguard_ cleared to engage, over.”

“ _Vanguard_ cleared to engage. Roger, Republic Fleet, over,” Hongbin echoes, and gets up out of his seat to slam the hyperspace lever down.

With a familiar jolt, the ship is flung forward into hyperspace, the soothing blue lights bathing the cockpit with a soft glow. “How long?” Sanghyuk asks, staring out the window with an awful sinking feeling in his stomach. “How long until we reach Alderaan?”

“Two hours,” Hongbin replies, coming up beside Sanghyuk and leaning his head on his shoulder. “I just hope he doesn’t get away before then.”

//

The next two hours are torturous for everyone.

Hongbin and Taekwoon retreat to their rooms to meditate, although Sanghyuk can sense that Hongbin isn’t doing much meditating at all and instead seems to be pacing the length of his cabin, his nervousness radiating through the Force in waves. Sanghyuk curls up on his bed and tries to bury his head in a book, although, much like Hongbin, he can’t concentrate on it at all. Taekwoon has been hunting Jaehwan for _five years_. He doesn’t even seem to be bothered by it. It’s his _duty_. And yet Sanghyuk thinks that it’s not quite as simple as that. He’s never got the full story out of Taekwoon—doesn’t know if he ever will—but he has no idea how Taekwoon expects to face his former best friend, his former brother-in-arms—no, his former brother full stop… Sanghyuk wouldn’t be able to do it, but then he has no family to speak of and no one to care about except for Taekwoon and Hongbin and Wonshik.

In the end he gives up on his book and instead decides to clean his blasters, something that he hasn’t done for a while. The familiar routine calms him somewhat, and so does the sight of the beautiful blue lightsaber crystals Taekwoon gave him on Nar Shaddaa. Taking his weapon apart, piece by piece, is easy and mechanical; part a mates with slot b. There’s no questions, no emotions, no worries. By the time he’s finished his blasters are cleaner than they’ve been in years and he feels completely soothed, relaxed even, which is a bizarre thing to feel when they’re about to maybe face a Sith—no, not a Sith, _the_ Sith. When he suits up in his armour and heads back to the bridge, Hongbin has his hand on the hyperspace lever, ready to yank it back when Taekwoon gives the go-ahead.

The first thing Sanghyuk sees when they come out of hyperspace is Alderaan reaching up towards them, and he takes an instinctual step towards the window to take a closer look. At first glance it looks similar to Tython; green continents, blue water. The continents look a little more broken-up, the seas a different shade, and he’s just about to turn around and ask what it’s like on the surface when a ship screams past, too close, and he flinches backwards.

“Oh no,” Hongbin breathes behind him.

Sanghyuk’s just about to ask what the hell that was when the floor lurches under his feet and he goes sailing over to the right. He manages to grab onto a handle on the wall and hold on for dear life as Taekwoon, having dived for the controls, steers them around after the other ship.

“What the hell!” he squeaks, his eyes widening as Taekwoon pushes in the throttles, making them gain on the other ship. It’s black and grey and menacing, and something in him tells him that this is _Shadow IV_ , Jaehwan’s ship, and being this close to him is both terrifying and exhilarating.

“Bring it round,” Taekwoon yells as Jaehwan’s ship screams upwards, although he’s not talking to anyone in particular. “Sanghyuk, get on those guns!”

Okay. That he can do. Except he didn't even realise this ship _had_  guns, and stands there stricken for a moment before Hongbin yells, “on the left!” and he dashes that way, bouncing from wall to wall as the ship strains to turn after _Shadow IV._

He lowers himself into the gun well, settling himself in the seat and staring outwards, transfixed. He’s in a little bubble on the underside of the ship, and the view is spectacular as they scream past Alderaan; the stars are just blurs of light when they’re moving this fast. In fact he’s almost content to sit there forever and just watch until the _Shadow_ appears in his field of view, and he realises that’s his cue. He’s never used a gun like this, one so huge that when he pulls the trigger experimentally the recoil reverbs through his whole body, but it’s not like he’s got time to play around—so he aims down the sights at the business end of the Sith ship and squeezes the trigger, gritting his teeth.

The gunfight is intense. Jaehwan’s ship is a lot more agile then theirs is, so it only often spends a few seconds in his crosshairs before spinning away above or below them again. Taekwoon and Hongbin are desperately trying to milk out every last bit of power they can from the engines, which are heaving and screaming with a desperate noise Sanghyuk has never heard before, but it’s futile; they can only get the edge for a sparse few moments. All Sanghyuk can do is keep whipping his head around, looking for the ship, and desperately try to hit it. He manages to get a good hit on one of its wings before it spins away from him, and grins to himself. This shouldn’t be exciting—it really, really shouldn’t—but it’s a dogfight in space, and he grew up hearing stories of just this sort of thing during the War. In fact, he’s having a fantastic time right up until there’s an explosion somewhere off to his right and he’s flung violently out of his seat, back up the corridor, his arms and legs pinwheeling desperately. There’s no gravity, he’s _floating_ , and he feels like he’s going to be sick as he is flung into the bridge, slamming into one wall and floating free. “What the fuck!” he yells, panicking. “What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck—”

“It’s alright.” Taekwoon is suddenly in front of him, and he grabs Sanghyuk by the arm and drags him over to a wall where he can cling desperately. “He hit our gravity generators. It’s alright, Sanghyuk.”

The Jedi have been trained for this, but he hasn’t, and it’s all he can do to stare at Taekwoon, who is floating in front of him serenely. Over his shoulder, Hongbin is hanging onto the controls as best he can, somehow managing to steer the ship while his body is stretched out like he’s laying down. “Go get that fixed, T7!” Hongbin yells desperately, and the droid beeps at him and wheels away along the floor—which is now the ceiling. _Droids are magnetic,_ Sanghyuk remembers faintly, and has to close his eyes for a moment and breathe out slowly.

When he opens them, Jaehwan’s ship is in front of them again, and as they all watch he waggles the wings delicately and, before they can do anything, jumps to hyperspace.

“What the hell.” Sanghyuk pushes off the wall to float gently over to Hongbin. He could see how this would be fun in a certain light, but right now he’s trying to not vomit everywhere. “Can we follow him?”

“Doubt it,” Hongbin replies, his face screwed up. “Stealth generators, remember? His ship uses cutting-edge technology. We don’t know where he got it.”

The ship lets out a groan, and with a thump they’re all slammed back onto the floor, everything suddenly turning right way up again. Hongbin manages to crawl up and hit a button on the console and the ship settles, flying smoothly, and for a moment they all just stare at each other. Hongbin looks unsettled, Sanghyuk probably looks how he feels (green), and Taekwoon… Taekwoon has an unreadable expression on his face as he runs a hand through his hair.

“Okay,” Sanghyuk breathes, dragging himself into a seat and exhaling slowly. “What the hell do we do now?”

Taekwoon turns away from him to look out at the front of the ship, where Alderaan looms in front of them, and his voice is quiet when he speaks a moment later. “We go to Alderaan. We find out what he did.”


	2. Chapter 2

“You’re gonna have to fill me in,” Sanghyuk whispers to Hongbin.

They’re striding across the floor of the spaceport they’ve just landed in—well, Taekwoon is, and Sanghyuk and Hongbin are jogging to catch up. The rest of the journey to the planet had been entirely uneventful—although Taekwoon had to begrudgingly announce their arrival to the Imperial authorities, as part of the agreement under the Treaty of Coruscant—but no one had said a word the entire time. Now that they’re planetside, Sanghyuk is itching to know Taekwoon’s history here.

“I know about as much as you do,” Hongbin hisses back, flipping the hood of his robe up to mirror Taekwoon. “There’s, like, eight different houses here who are all fighting for the crown. It’s a bloodbath.”

Figuring it’s better safe than sorry, Sanghyuk slips his helmet over his head. “Which one does Taekwoon belong to?”

“No idea. He’s never mentioned his family… Or Jaehwan’s.”

Right. So. They’re just meant to follow Taekwoon’s lead, literally, and hope that this all comes out okay. Which would have worked for Sanghyuk before, but not now; not when he’s opened himself up to Taekwoon and received basically nothing in return. Hell, he’d even told Taekwoon the secret that he’s never, ever told anyone else—how he freed himself by killing his last Master, and how he still has nightmares about it sometimes. No, now they’re partners, and that means doing things together, so he grabs the sleeve of Taekwoon’s robe and tugs him to a halt, wheeling him around to face them. “Taekwoon. Talk to us. We can’t walk into this blind.”

“I’m hardly dragging you into a firefight,” Taekwoon says quietly.

“How are we meant to know that?” Hongbin accuses, stepping forward. “This place isn’t exactly what I’d call peaceful.”

Taekwoon looks at the floor for a moment, taking a deep breath in. “Okay. We’re going to visit my parents. Then we’re going to visit Jaehwan’s parents. No fighting involved, just a diplomatic visit.”

“What houses?” Sanghyuk interjects.

“I belong to House Ulgo,” Taekwoon tells him, meeting his eyes. Sanghyuk can sense that even giving him this little piece of information is incredibly personal. He doesn’t know what made Taekwoon so reserved, so private, but he has a feeling it’s probably Jaehwan’s fault. “Jaehwan belongs to House Thul.”

“Okay.” Sanghyuk nods. “Let’s get going, then.”

As they exit the spaceport, Sanghyuk peers around, getting his first glimpse of Alderaan. Like he suspected, it’s similar to Tython; the climate feels the same, if perhaps a bit colder. There’s not as many trees, and the air tastes different, but it’s pleasant enough. He only catches Hongbin’s worried glance when he tilts his head to the sky to look and his hood slips back.

“What is it?” he murmurs as they make their way towards the row of waiting taxis.

“House Ulgo started this civil war.” When he looks back over his shoulder, Hongbin’s eyes are narrowed. “And House Thul is backed by the Empire.”

Sanghyuk tries to wrap his head around that information as he slides into the back seat of a taxi next to Hongbin. Right. That certainly makes things more interesting. He reaches out through the Force to see what Taekwoon is feeling, but can only sense that same gaping emptiness he felt when Hongbin was knighted. It worries him, but there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it except lean forward and clap Taekwoon on the shoulder gently, trying to convey as much love and affection and goodness through that touch as he can.

Taekwoon reaches back and touches Sanghyuk’s hand briefly, and when he turns his head to the side, Sanghyuk can see a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. _I love you,_ he hears in his head, and knows that nothing can change that.

//

They’re left languishing in a throne room for an absurdly long amount of time. Hongbin drifts off into a catatonic state and starts biting his nails, Taekwoon kneels on the floor and starts meditating, and Sanghyuk settles for pacing behind them, resisting the urge to peel away and explore the rest of the palace. Because that’s what this building is, it’s a palace, an honest-to-goodness _palace_ that’s somehow more lush than the Temple on Tython, with gold everywhere and more lavish furnishings than Sanghyuk has ever seen in his life. The street-rat inside him longs to steal and sell, but he just puts his hands on his blasters instead. He left that life behind for a reason, and he’d like to think he’s better than getting greedy any time he sees anything shiny.

“Taekwoon?”

Sanghyuk whirls around to see a tall, thin woman in a beautiful blue dress hovering in the doorway. Her dark hair is done in a half-up, half-down style that’s similar to what Taekwoon sports—but most piercing of all are her eyes, Taekwoon’s eyes, and when she smiles it looks so much like Taekwoon’s smile he has to blink.

“Hello, Mother,” Taekwoon replies quietly, getting up slowly. “I’m here—”

He’s cut off by the woman flying across the room to draw him into her arms, hugging him so tightly it looks like she’s squeezing the life out of him. “Oh, Taekwoon. I thought I would never see you again. Your father and I are so proud of you.” She pulls back to stare into his face like she’s memorising it. “You look just like I imagined you would.”

Taekwoon smiles, but it’s an awkward sort of smile that doesn’t look right on his face. “Mother, these are… This is my former Padawan, Hongbin.” Hongbin gives an awkward sort of wave. “And this is my friend Sanghyuk.”

“Interesting sort of company you keep. I didn’t realise Jedi mixed with bounty hunters,” she replies archly, smirking slightly.

Sanghyuk decides he likes her, and tugs off his helmet. “I’m no bounty hunter, ma’am. Just a tag-along. Nice to meet you.”

“Ah, that makes more sense,” she says, and her eyes are twinkling as she turns back to Taekwoon. “What brings you back here? Is it to help with this damned war? Your father certainly stepped in it when he declared himself King. Every other house on the planet despises us, now.”

“Unfortunately not. I’m here on Jedi business. Have you heard from Jaehwan recently?” Taekwoon’s tone is businesslike, formal, and Sanghyuk and Hongbin exchange a long glance. If Sanghyuk could talk to his mother again, he certainly wouldn’t be talking to her like she was his boss; there’s something off here, but he can’t quite pinpoint what.

Taekwoon’s mother takes a step back, surprised. “Jaehwan? House Thul’s heir? The one you went to the Academy with?” Slowly, she reaches out to touch Taekwoon on the face, before reconsidering. “No, I haven’t. How is he doing?”

“Jaehwan is a Sith,” Taekwoon deadpans. “It’s my job to… find him.”

That’s the moment that Sanghyuk can see the woman realises that the toddler she shipped off to Coruscant twenty-two years ago has matured into a man she doesn’t know; they share a name and a face but not much else. She takes a step back, her expression blank, and shakes her head. It breaks Sanghyuk’s heart to see; there’s so much distance between them it’s like a gulf. “No, we haven’t heard from Jaehwan. Would you like us to notify you if we do?” She pauses for a moment, struggling with her words. “If he did come here… what would his intentions be? Is he… after us?”

“I don’t know.” Taekwoon hands over his holocom to her. “He is a very dangerous individual, but he’s already visited the planet today. If he didn’t come to visit you, I would assume you are safe.”

“I’ve learnt never to assume anything,” she mutters, handing the holocom back after programming her number into it. “Thank you for the warning. I’ll let your father know.”

Taekwoon nods at her and goes to turn away, and Sanghyuk sees her reach to hug him but hesitate and pull back at the last minute, and he nearly wants to go over there and hug her himself. Taekwoon has a loving family and he doesn’t even care about them. Sanghyuk would give his left arm to have his mother back with him alive and well. The distance between them grows yet again as they leave House Ulgo, and he stares at Taekwoon’s back as they head towards the taxis, trying desperately not to let the resentment build.

It’s hard not to, though, when he looks back and sees her standing in the doorway, watching them leave.

//

The taxi ride to House Thul is silent. Sanghyuk longs to ask Taekwoon about his indifference towards his family, but he can’t, not when Hongbin’s around, so instead he stares out the window at Alderaan’s countryside and wishes he was somewhere else. Things were meant to be fantastic. Things _were_ fantastic, for a while after Nar Shaddaa. But now it’s like his world is slowly crumbling in front of him and he can’t do a single thing about it. The closer they get to Jaehwan, the more Taekwoon fades away—and he has no idea what to do.

“Something’s wrong.” Taekwoon reaches for his lightsaber the moment they all clamber out of the taxi. “There should be guards here.”

House Thul is set away from the other houses, on a beautiful patch of land that’s ringed by gently swaying leafy trees. There’s a set of stairs in front of them leading up towards the compound itself, and when Sanghyuk looks around he feels a chill run down his spine. Death was here.

“Jaehwan,” Taekwoon hisses, a confirmation, and sets off towards the stairs. “Can’t you sense him?”

Sanghyuk can’t, but then the only time he’s ever felt the dark side is when he was physically in the same room as Hakyeon, and once had been enough. He never wants to feel that cold hatred again. Hongbin shakes his head, his lightsaber already in hand. “No, I—wait. I sense…” he pauses, closing his eyes. “I sense Hakyeon.”

Sanghyuk’s eyes narrow. “He survived, then,” he says to no one in particular, but sees Hongbin’s shoulders hunch. He’d sort of figured that Hakyeon would survive that shot, even if it was a nasty one; he seemed the type.

“This is not about revenge,” Taekwoon reminds Hongbin gently, peering into his face. His voice is soft, gentle, and Sanghyuk knows he’s not speaking as a Master but as a brother. “Jedi do not seek revenge.”

“I know,” Hongbin says after a beat of silence, slumping his shoulders a little. “I know.”

Sanghyuk follows them up the stairs silently. They find the first dead body halfway up, a man dressed in House Thul’s colours and with his rifle still clutched in his hand. When Taekwoon kneels and puts his hand on the man’s forehead, Sanghyuk sees a chill run through him. “This was Hakyeon.”

“I’ve touched his mind, and it was not pleasant. He is crazier than most,” Hongbin says as they continue glumly upwards, the mood most definitely muted.

Sanghyuk has his blasters drawn, but it’s useless; the further into the compound they get, the more evident it is that the two Sith have left no one alive, no evidence to their destruction. They all know what they’re going to find when they enter the palace proper, traipsing past dead servants and even droids, slashed in half and marked by the burn of a lightsaber, but no one wants to confirm it.

“Jaehwan’s parents,” Taekwoon breathes, and his voice is so quiet Sanghyuk has to strain to hear him.

The bodies at his feet are a middle-aged man and woman. Sanghyuk has only seen Jaehwan once, and that was at night, so he doesn’t recognise any of their features in the slightest. But Taekwoon’s shoulders are rounded as he curls in on himself, sorrow ripping through him. Hongbin and Sanghyuk stand back, letting him grieve, letting him mourn for Jaehwan’s parents since Jaehwan certainly isn’t going to. Sanghyuk longs to hold him but knows he can’t, and the distance between them is like an ocean in the absence of physical contact.

“These people are the only two he killed himself,” Taekwoon tells them once he turns around, looking three shades paler. “The rest are all Hakyeon’s doing.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Sanghyuk mutters, staring at the face of the woman, her features peaceful even in death. “What is he playing at? Why would he murder his own parents?”

“The Sith are evil down to the bone,” Hongbin replies, his lips twisted into a snarl. “But this is on another level entirely.”

They both look to Taekwoon for guidance, lost. This is his world, his planet, his former best friend—but when he looks back at them he looks just as adrift as they do, helpless to do anything in the face of the horrors at their feet. It’s heartbreaking to see, especially because he normally looks so assured and in charge, and it feels like they’ve all been cut loose. They all knew Jaehwan was evil… But to murder your own parents is cold blood is a whole new subset of evil that Sanghyuk’s only read about in books. Jaehwan is an honest-to-god villain.

“Let’s get out of here,” he tells them, since Taekwoon’s in no state to be giving orders and Hongbin doesn’t want to say anything. “We got what we came for.”

They head for the door slowly, lost in their own thoughts, the stench of death surrounding and enveloping them completely.

 

 **_3656 BBY_ **  
**_25 years since the start of the Great Galactic War_ **  
**_3 years until the Treaty of Coruscant_ **

“What was your family like?”

The Temple library is so silent that Jaehwan’s whispered question cuts the air around them like a knife, and Taekwoon drops the book he was reading in surprise. Sometimes he thinks he knows Jaehwan better than he knows himself, but then he goes and says things that knock Taekwoon for six. He himself doesn’t think of his family much; he spares a thought every time the news reports on the War, and how Alderaan is faring, but otherwise they don’t occupy his mind. And why would they? He barely remembers them. His family is Jaehwan. His life is the Order. “Why are you asking that?” he counters, leaning forward so his Padawan braid swishes across the table. “Master Yanila says attachments aren’t good for Jedi.”

Jaehwan rolls his eyes. “Master Ven says that too, but I don’t think it makes any sense. We are attached to each other, and they don’t seem to mind.”

Inwardly, Taekwoon disagrees. While it’s customary for a Jedi to only take on one Padawan at a time, there have been instances where a Jedi has two Padawans at the same time. The Council could have made such an offer in their case, but they didn’t, and instead assigned them different masters—Master Yanila Zavros and Master Ven Zallow, respectively. Perhaps this is their way of beginning the slow separation, of driving a slight wedge between them. It’s not like it’s worked, though; any moment that they’re not by their Master’s sides they spend together, joined at the hip, just like always.

“I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Being attached is unhealthy. It prevents us from doing our job properly.”

Jaehwan’s eyes blaze, and he leans forward, looming over Taekwoon. At thirteen, they’ve both started their growth spurts; Jaehwan is ahead right now, but Taekwoon is slowly catching up. “That’s bullshit. How is looking out for each other unhealthy? I would do anything to save you if your life was in danger,” he replies, as violently as he can considering his voice is lowered lest anyone hears.

“That’s the point,” Taekwoon replies mildly, winding his braid around his finger. “You would risk innocent lives to save me, when you shouldn’t. I shouldn’t take priority in your life over anyone else just because we’ve grown up together.”

“Are you saying _I_ don’t take priority in your life?”

“That’s not what I—”

“Fuck you, Taekwoon,” Jaehwan snarls, and Taekwoon can feel the anger radiating off him in waves. “You’re my brother, and nothing can change that. I’m _not_ in the wrong for wanting to defend you with my life.”

Before Taekwoon can even begin to reply, Jaehwan turns and sprints away, his braid streaming out behind him. Through the Force, Taekwoon can sense a deep, painful anger, ringed by hurt and sorrow. He doesn’t get up, though. He just watches Jaehwan go and bites his lip, his fingers clenching the page of his book so hard the paper tears in his hand.

//

Taekwoon doesn’t even bother to use the Force to search for Jaehwan, because after so long together he knows where he will be—and sure enough, when he reaches the training courtyard, Jaehwan is there, attacking a practice dummy with a voracity that is frightening to watch.

“I know you’re there, hyung,” Jaehwan says, dropping the stick on the ground and turning. “What do you want?”

Taking one step forward, and then another, Taekwoon keeps looking Jaehwan in the eyes as he speaks. “I can’t remember much of my family. My mother was kind, and she liked to wear blue… Her hair was the same colour as mine.” He reaches up and touches his hair automatically, remembering her face as best he can. “I didn’t see my father much. He is a general in the military, so he was always busy with the War.”

Jaehwan’s face is guarded as Taekwoon stops in front of him, but he doesn’t push him away when Taekwoon hugs him. “I don’t remember them much because they don’t matter to me, hyung. You are my only family, the only person I care about.”

“I’m sorry,” Jaehwan murmurs into Taekwoon’s hair, hugging him back tightly. “I just… I get so frustrated sometimes. Imagining my family is a way out of that.”

“Why are you frustrated?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Jaehwan pulls back out of Taekwoon’s arms, a scowl on his face. “The Council knows how close we are and yet intentionally separates us by assigning us different Masters. They haven’t even let us build our lightsabers yet—”

“We’ve been Padawans for a month! Try and be patient, Jaehwan—”

“—and I know for a fact my telekinesis is better than yours, but I never get praise for that. But the Masters fall all over themselves to tell you how good your swordsmanship is when you don’t deserve it,” Jaehwan spits, the anger once again rising in him.

Taekwoon takes a step back, aghast. “Tell me you don’t mean that.”

The dark feelings in Jaehwan are something he hasn’t ever felt before, and it sends a deep chill of dread through him. Anger, hurt, jealousy—they’re all there, and they’re all directed at _him_. There’s nothing he can do about it, because Jaehwan has never felt like this before. He’s completely helpless.

“No, I don’t,” Jaehwan says, deflating in front of Taekwoons eyes. The dark feelings drain away, and now all Taekwoon can sense from him is a void, an emptiness that stretches between them. “I apologise, hyung. I’m going to go meditate on my mistakes.”

Taekwoon watches him go, feeling sick and realising, faintly, that the Council’s ploy to separate them might not be working in the way they intended.

 

 **_3644 BBY_ **  
**_9 years since the Treaty of Coruscant_ **

Sanghyuk can feel, through the Force, that Taekwoon is in the the intense state of relaxation that comes par for the course with meditation—but he doesn’t particularly care, and bursts in his room anyway, a scowl on his face and tension carried across his whole body. “What the fuck was that?” he blurts, folding his arms over his chest.

“What was what?” Taekwoon replies mildly, blinking up at Sanghyuk owlishly.

“Back there, on Alderaan.” Sanghyuk gestures behind him towards the bridge. “Your _mother_ , Taekwoon. She loves you. You were so cold to her!”

He sees understanding dawn on Taekwoon’s face, and he hates it, he _hates_ being read like that. Seeing Taekwoon be so indifferent to his own flesh and blood has triggered something in him, yes, but he’s immediately on the defensive. “Is this because of your own mother?”

“Don’t read my fucking mind, Taekwoon,” Sanghyuk growls in response, a flare of anger coursing through him.

Taekwoon sags, and uncrosses his legs, stretching them out in front of him. “I apologise,” he says with a wry smile. “You’re very easy to read. I do it without realising. Come here.” He pats the bed next to him.

Warily, Sanghyuk stalks over to the bed and sits down, leaning into Taekwoon automatically. They fit together so well that Sanghyuk wonders how he went twenty years without knowing Taekwoon; life before him tends to pale into grey. “Talk to me,” Taekwoon whispers to him, pressing a gentle kiss into his hair, which is getting long—he needs to cut it sometime soon.

“I miss her,” Sanghyuk replies softly, closing his eyes in case he starts to cry. His last memories of his mother are tainted by her sickness, but he doesn’t want to remember her like that. She was a kind woman, who never had a bitter moment or a sharp word, despite her being a slave. He wonders what she would think of him today. “I miss her so much, Taekwoon, you have no idea. I was six, for god’s sake. She was the only good thing I had in my life. And to see you being so cold to your own mother… I would do anything to get her back, and you have someone who loves you right in front of you. It was frustrating as hell to see that.”

“She is my mother in name only,” Taekwoon replies. “I was taken from her when I was three. I remember less of her than you do of your own mother. My only family was… Jaehwan.” Sanghyuk stiffens at that name, but Taekwoon continues regardless. “My life revolved around him, and the Code.”

Sanghyuk shakes his head, pulling back so Taekwoon can see the confusion in his eyes. “I wish I could understand. But I can’t. Jedi are so weird.” Taekwoon raises an eyebrow, but Sanghyuk throws his hands up in the air. “What! You are. You preach all that unconditional love bullshit but then restrict you from actually loving. Seems dumb to me.”

“Hasn’t stopped me,” Taekwoon murmurs, sliding one arm around Sanghyuk’s waist and tugging him closer, so they’re nearly on top of each other. Just like always, the way Taekwoon touches him is intoxicating, and his head swims as Taekwoon leans up to kiss him, softly and gently.

“Hongbin is next door,” he whispers, but he’s not protesting, not _really;_ his hands are already tugging at the collar of Taekwoon’s robe, dipping down to palm his chest. “He’ll hear. He’ll _feel.”_

“Let him,” Taekwoon growls in his ear.

Sanghyuk doesn’t protest any further when Taekwoon strips him, accidentally ripping his shirt in the eagerness to get it off, and he certainly doesn’t protest when Taekwoon pins him to the bed and goes down on him, making him writhe and moan and thrust into Taekwoon’s mouth desperately, silently begging for more. The rest of the galaxy fades into oblivion as Taekwoon fucks him slowly and deeply, not letting him come, not letting him get the release he so desperately craves—but it’s worth every second to see the way Taekwoon’s eyes flash at him in the low light, the way he mouths soft kisses to Sanghyuk’s belly, the way he sears through Sanghyuk’s defences with just a touch and a word. When Sanghyuk comes, finally, he gasps Taekwoon’s name over and over, his eyes rolling back in his head as he feels through the Force that they are one, they are one, they are one, nothing will break them, they are one.


	3. Chapter 3

“Coming out of hyperspace in three, two, one,” Hongbin states, and then slams back the hyperspace lever.

It had been Hongbin’s idea to take them back to report to the Council on what they’d found on Alderaan—Sanghyuk didn’t know why they couldn’t do it via holocom, but Taekwoon had seemed content to sit back and let Hongbin be in charge—so this time it’s Tython looming up towards them, looking green and deliciously familiar and safe. There’s no demons here, and Sanghyuk actually looks forward to being back on friendly ground again, even though he left here just over twenty-four hours ago.

“Do you think Satele—” Sanghyuk begins, but is cut off by a horribly familiar loud alarm.

Everyone freezes for a moment. Surely not _again_. It’s been less than twelve hours since they last heard it, and surely Jaehwan wouldn’t be playing with them again. Sanghyuk refuses to believe until Taekwoon brings up coordinates on the galaxy map, and then he feels like he’s spinning backwards, like gravity is gone once more. They’re all staring helplessly at Coruscant, blown up and twinkling blue, the shining jewel in the Republic. Surely not.

“He isn’t…” Sanghyuk whispers under his breath to no one in particular, his eyes wide. “He can’t… No…”

“This is war.” Hongbin scowls, his hands twitching on the controls. “He wouldn’t go to the capital for any other reason. This is _war!_ The last time a Sith was on Coruscant—”

“Everyone died!” Taekwoon roars, and Sanghyuk takes a step back from the force of his anger and fear. “The last time a Sith was on Coruscant, everyone died.”

The situation begins to spiral out of control very fast, and Sanghyuk is frozen in place, watching it happen helplessly. Taekwoon takes the controls and steers the ship around, away from Tython, and starts programming the hyperspace computer. Hongbin’s eyes are wide in shock, but he shakes his head. “We can’t go there. What if it’s an invasion? What if there’s hundreds of them? We—”

Behind him, Sanghyuk hears the familiar beep of a holocom, and turns to answer the call, relieved. This is something he can handle. He’ll let the Jedi decide whether they’re all marching to their death or not. When he answers, Satele is standing there, looking more worried than he has ever seen her before. “Sanghyuk? What’s happening? We have reports of Jaehwan’s ship coming out of hyperspace on Coruscant of all places. I’m fielding calls from the Fleet as we speak.”

“We heard it too,” Sanghyuk replies, looking over his shoulder to see Hongbin standing over Taekwoon—or rather looming over him. “I think—I think we’re going to Coruscant. Taekwoon doesn’t know what’s happening.” He pauses, suddenly afraid. War is as familiar to him as breathing; it was his normal until he was eleven. He grew up hearing stories of battles, of Jedi slain, of Sith dominance. It’s not something he ever wants to hear again. “Is this an invasion?”

“I don’t think so,” Satele reassures him, although her eyebrows are still drawn together. “It’s just one ship. But this… This isn’t a good sign.”

“We were on our way back to report. Jaehwan’s ship came out of hyperspace at Alderaan, less than twenty-four hours ago.” Sanghyuk staggers as the ship jumps to hyperspace, tuning out the argument behind him as best he can, reaching for the tuning knobs as Satele’s picture goes a bit staticky. “Taekwoon’s family was fine, but… Master Satele, Jaehwan slaughtered House Thul. _All_ of them.”

Satele shakes her head sadly, digesting the news silently. “Okay… Okay. Stand by for further instructions. I’ll call you in half an hour.”

Sanghyuk disconnects the call and leans against the console heavily, resting his forehead on the cool plastic and exhaling. He can’t believe Jaehwan would be so brave, or so stupid, as to go to the capital. Unless he turns tail and flies away immediately, the might of the Republic Fleet will have no doubt annihilated him by the time they arrive. And if it doesn’t, then who the hell knows what they’re going to find?

“He’s playing with you, you know,” he says, turning around to catch Taekwoon’s eyes. “This is all some kind of game to him, I bet.”

Taekwoon sags, all the fight going out of him. “I know.”

Hongbin scoffs and shoulders past him, leaving the two of them on the bridge. Sanghyuk wants to take Taekwoon into his arms, but doesn’t move, his thoughts tearing him up from the inside-out. Jaehwan is playing some sort of sick game with Taekwoon, but to what end? What is he luring him towards? Which pieces of his past is he digging up this time? Every time Taekwoon slips backwards into the past, into his own head, Sanghyuk can feel them drifting further and further apart. Taekwoon has been chasing Jaehwan for the past five years, and now they’re building towards a crescendo that may just be the undoing of them all.

Sanghyuk turns away from Taekwoon sadly and meanders down the hall to his room, his mind full of thoughts, spilling over. Not even tapping into the Force can help him, now. All that does is leave him more unsure of the coming battle ahead.

//

“This isn’t the first instance of aggression the Sith have displayed recently. The Imperial Fleet appears to be massing in the Outer Rim, and we’ve noted numerous incidents where Sith or Imperial agents appear to have violated the terms of the Treaty.” Satele’s voice is low, serious, and Sanghyuk wishes he was anywhere else but here, standing in front of the holo terminal, watching her speak. “We believe that we are very close to another war. A war we most certainly cannot win. Jaehwan’s breach of Coruscant’s airspace is just another step closer towards this reality.” She puts her hands behind her back and sticks her chin forward, resolute. “Intelligence suggests that Jaehwan’s being groomed by the Dark Council as their next member. This would infer that he is important to whatever the Sith are planning, perhaps even instrumental.”

“What are you saying, Satele?” Taekwoon steps forward, closer to the console. “Don’t try and spin it to me nicely. Just say what you need to say.”

“Your mission parameters have changed,” she deadpans. “We believe that he is too far gone to bring back to the light. He has been a Sith for five years now, and whatever he did on Alderaan wasn’t just to toy with you. It was for a _reason_. He is tying off all his loose ends. So, if and when you do encounter him, your instructions are to destroy him.”

Sanghyuk takes a step back, aghast. The words she’s saying don’t match up with everything he knows about her—an advocate for peace, the gentle, kind, soft-spoken woman who had tucked him into bed every time he had nightmares and who had made him hot chocolates when she caught him wandering the Temple when he couldn’t sleep. This Satele is hard, businesslike, and he doesn’t like it.

“That is not the Jedi way,” Hongbin counters, echoing Sanghyuk’s thoughts directly. “Why are you advocating such violent methods?”

“Because we are on the brink of war, Knight Hongbin, and I would like to do everything in my power to prevent that. You are dismissed.” Satele’s face is completely cold as she terminates the call, and Sanghyuk shivers, turning to the two Jedi.

Things must really be desperate if the Jedi are resorting to such brutal methods; Jaehwan used to be one of their own, and yet now Taekwoon doesn’t even have a choice on whether he can be redeemed or not. Shooting first and asking questions later has always been Sanghyuk’s personal policy, and he’s not really comfortable seeing it adopted by what he thought were the protectors of peace in the galaxy. When he reaches out to touch the Force, what he feels there makes him hunch his shoulders and wince. Normally the Force is clear and easy to read; it’s soothing and constant. This time, though, it almost feels like the sea in a storm—rough, turbulent, _wrong_. By the dark look on Taekwoon’s face, he senses it too.

He doesn’t even bother to ask what this means, because he knows no one has any answers.

//

“Republic Fleet, this is _Vanguard_ , requesting status on _Shadow IV_ , over.”

Hongbin’s voice is a hum in the background, and Sanghyuk rests his head on the wall behind him and slips away. The closer they got to Coruscant, the more distant he felt, and now that they’re entering its orbit he feels like he’s about to float away entirely. There’s something dark stirring in the Force, something he hasn’t felt before, something that’s somehow worse than how Hakyeon felt. This is insidious, dangerous, and it makes his head hurt to focus on.

“ _Vanguard, Shadow IV_ entered Coruscant airspace approximately four hours ago. The Republic Fleet tried to hail the ship numerous times and informed it that it was in breach of the Treaty of Coruscant. When fighters were scrambled it jumped to hyperspace. No further information for you, over.”

“You sense it?” Taekwoon asks, and Sanghyuk doesn’t even stir, knowing it’s not directed at him.

“Yeah.” Hongbin’s voice is quiet. “You think his ship was just a diversion?”

“It must have been. I sense him down there, and I suspect he’s at the Temple.”

“I agree. What do you want to do?”

Sanghyuk stirs, pushing himself off the floor and clambering to his feet, grimacing at the way his stomach rolls. Whatever he’s feeling the Jedi must be feeling tenfold, but it doesn’t register on their faces as they look at him. “We have to go.” He folds his arms over his chest, daring them to disagree with him. “He’s a Sith, and he’s on the capital. It’s our duty.”

“Since when did the protection of the galaxy become _your_ duty?” Hongbin snipes with rolling eyes, but Sanghyuk sidles up to him and slings an arm around his neck, so he snorts. “Oh, right. Since you shacked up with us and became a pseudo-Jedi. Got it.”

“Sanghyuk is right.” Taekwoon sits back down into the captain’s chair, placing his hands on the throttles and pushing them in smoothly. “I don’t know what he’s doing down there in the bowels of the Temple, but it is our duty to stop it. Coruscant approach, this is the _Vanguard_ requesting a landing platform near to the Jedi Temple, over.” He addresses the last part to the console, making it clear that the other two are dismissed.

Hongbin rolls his eyes again as they walk down the hall a little to the small kitchen area. “Why do I feel like I’m still a Padawan?”

“I’m sure things will get better when all this shit is fixed,” Sanghyuk reassures him, although he feels decidedly unsure as he fetches two space bars from the cupboard, chucking one to Hongbin.

There’s no more words as they eat silently, feeling glum and pensive in the face of what is to come.

 

**_3654 BBY_ **   
**_27 years since the start of the Great Galactic War_ **   
**_1 year until the Treaty of Coruscant_ **

“Hyung!”

Jaehwan’s waving wildly as he crosses the courtyard of the Temple, his braid streaming out behind him. Taekwoon only has a moment to turn and catch his eyes before Jaehwan barrels into him, tackling him in a hug that sends them both flying to the floor. This quickly turns into a scuffle as Taekwoon rolls over, jamming his fingers underneath Jaehwan’s armpits and making him howl with laughter. Perhaps a bit juvenile for fifteen-year-olds, but they haven’t seen each other in months; this is the only way they know how to say hello.

“Get off me, you bastard!” Jaehwan chokes out between wheezing laughter fits, eventually using the Force to push Taekwoon away and flipping onto his feet.

“Okay, okay.” Taekwoon backs away, his hands in the air, but he can’t keep the smile off his face.

The separation had started slowly, although he has no doubt it was coordinated—the Council is clever like that, and he’s only just starting to realise the extent of their plans for them now that he’s getting older. At first it had only been a few days here and there; an easy mission to the Outer Rim for Taekwoon, and an excursion to another Republic world for Jaehwan. Things they could do were limited by the War, of course, considering they were untried in battle and didn’t even have their own lightsabers, but slowly days turned into weeks which then turned into months. It was all carefully scripted so that if Taekwoon was on Coruscant, Jaehwan was away on a mission, and vice-versa. They still kept in contact via emails and holocalls, of course, but it wasn’t quite the same, and despite himself Taekwoon found his mind lingering on Jaehwan less and less as of late.

“How are you?” Jaehwan asks, positively bouncing as they start towards the Council chambers. “I heard you got to go to Dantooine. What other news do you have?”

Taekwoon doesn’t even hesitate to tell Jaehwan the news that’s been bubbling up in him for weeks. “Master Jaric Kaedan has been giving me extra swordsmanship lessons. He’s teaching me in Form V. He thinks I’ll be able to wield two lightsabers, just like Master Yanila does. He says I’m the most talented swordsman he’s seen in years! And Master Yanila thinks I’ll—what is it?” he asks, noticing the look on Jaehwan’s face.

“Nothing,” Jaehwan says, but he’s frowning and his eyes are dark, and Taekwoon can sense the jealousy swirling around in him. “That’s fantastic news. I always knew you’d be great at that.”

They fall silent, the absence of words stretching uncomfortable between them. Taekwoon has never noticed this friction between them before. He always knew that he was better at swordsmanship than Jaehwan was, but then Jaehwan was better at using Force abilities than he was, and he didn’t get jealous over that. There was no point, really. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. And that’s not to say Jaehwan’s _bad_ at swordsmanship; he’s still a challenge for Taekwoon, or used to be when they dueled together with practice blades. The jealousy that seethes through Jaehwan is a force to be reckoned with, though, and Taekwoon has no idea where to even begin.

“What about you?” he asks eventually, albeit hesitantly. “What news do you have?”

Jaehwan shrugs. “Nothing much, really. Master Zen doesn’t let me see action, not like you do. Sometimes I feel like he’s holding me back. I’m so much more powerful than he knows. Even the Council doesn’t take me seriously.”

“The Council? What do they have to do with this?”

“I petitioned them to let me craft my lightsaber, since Master Zen didn’t seem like he was going to let me do it anytime soon,” Jaehwan sniffs. “Have you noticed that we are the only two fifteen-year-old Padawans still using training sabers? It’s humiliating.”

Taekwoon is perturbed by Jaehwan’s words, and ducks his head to stare at the ground as they walk. “Our Masters will send us to craft our lightsabers when we’re ready. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”

“It’s embarrassing!” hisses Jaehwan. “Anyway, the Council didn’t listen. They said exactly what you did just now. And Master Zen wasn’t very happy with me.”

To say that Taekwoon is taken aback by all of this would be a massive understatement. Not once in all the emails Jaehwan sent had he indicated he was displeased with the way things were; but now that he’s practically vibrating with frustration it’s so hard to deny. It’s also getting hard to deny the fear he feels, although he can’t tell if it’s fear _of_ Jaehwan or fear _for_ him.

“I didn’t know you felt that way.” Taekwoon resists the urge to wind his braid around his finger, a tell that Jaehwan will pick up on—if he isn’t already picking up on his anxiety that Taekwoon is sure is screaming at him through the Force.

Jaehwan rolls his eyes. “No, why would you? You’ve never questioned anything. Everything goes fantastic for you and you never have any reason to worry about anything else.” The bitterness in his tone is palpable, and Taekwoon silently wonders when Jaehwan grew into someone he’s starting to barely recognise.

He can’t even respond to that, though, because as they round the corner into the foyer of the Temple proper, they bump into someone and back away automatically, bowing and muttering apologies. Someone turns out to be some _ones_ , though, and to Taekwoon’s surprise it’s Master Yanila and Master Zen walking together.

“Masters,” he says courteously, bowing his head towards them. Next to him, Jaehwan folds his arms over his chest and raises an eyebrow.

“Just the people we wanted to see,” Yanila says, smiling at Taekwoon. He smiles back, although keeps it small, since Jaehwan is still glaring at him. Yanila is kind to him, even if she pushes him hard, and Taekwoon considers himself very lucky to have her as a Master. “Master Zen and I have been discussing, and we’d like to send you both to Ilum together for the Gathering.”

Taekwoon reaches to hug Jaehwan before he even knows what he’s doing; despite their fighting they are still, deep down, brothers, and nothing can come between that. This is the news he has been hoping to hear for an age now, although he’s a lot more patient than Jaehwan and would never dream of bothering the Council over such a matter. The Gathering! The ritual for a Padawan to gather a kyber crystal for their lightsaber, which they then forge deep in the Temple on Ilum. At least now he knows he is ready to wield a lightsaber, or two, and the fact that he gets to go on this pilgrimage with Jaehwan by his side is just the cherry on top of it all.

“When?” Jaehwan asks to Master Zen, but his tone is decidedly lighter than moments ago.

“Sometime in the new year,” Zen replies, smiling in a way that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “As you two know, your training has been very different to that of the other Padawans, and this is no different. The two of you will be making the pilgrimage to Ilum alone. We cannot accompany you.”

Jaehwan and Taekwoon look at each other, puzzled. It’s simply not done for Padawans to go to Ilum alone; most of the time they go in groups of about ten, although Taekwoon had sort of expected they wouldn’t accompany the younger Padawans and would go separately. But without their Masters? Unheard of… But, then again, it’s also unheard of for two Padawans to reach fifteen without having constructed lightsabers of their own.

“Why can’t you join us?” Jaehwan challenges. Taekwoon winces. Sometimes he wishes Jaehwan would just let the Masters be Masters and leave them be rather than questioning their every move. “Where will you be?”

Yanila and Zen exchange a long glance, before Yanila turns back to the Padawans and smiles broadly. “We will be on Coruscant. We are needed here. You’ll both be fine on Ilum together; this is well-overdue.”

Her tone indicates there’s no discussion to be made, and even Jaehwan settles, so they bow to their Masters and murmur goodbyes. Taekwoon can feel, through the Force, that Jaehwan is just as confused as he is—and for good reason, too. “Why do you think they can’t come with us?” he muses, more to himself than to Jaehwan.

“I bet it’s got something to do with those talks of peace.” Jaehwan runs a hand through his hair exasperatedly. “You’ve been hearing those rumours too, right?”

“Yes, but if they are needed on Coruscant, surely we are needed too,” Taekwoon points out. The Force is clouded when he looks at the future; enough to set him on edge slightly. “We can be of assistance.”

Jaehwan grabs Taekwoon by the arm and pulls him to a stop. They’re in one of the Temple’s labyrinth-like corridors, but Jaehwan tugs him backwards so they’re tucked away. “Do you really want to be there? With the _Sith?_ They’re terrifying.” A shudder runs through him. “It’s not like me to say this, but for once I think we should just put our heads down and do as we’re told. The Force isn’t very happy at the moment.”

“How the tables have turned,” Taekwoon points out wryly. “I don’t know, Jaehwan. I want to do as I’m told, believe me. But I feel like there’s more to this than meets the eye. It can’t be as simple as the Empire just deciding to throw down their weapons. They aren’t like that.”

“There’s nothing we can do. They’re staying on Coruscant, and we’re going to Ilum,” Jaehwan says, his tone final. Taekwoon knows there’s no point arguing. Jaehwan _is_ right, even if he still feels unsettled at the idea of their first solo mission together being under such tense circumstances. “Look on the bright side! We’re finally getting lightsabers,” continues Jaehwan, looping his arm through Taekwoon’s and tugging him back down the corridor. “What colour crystal do you want?”

Taekwoon tries to shake off his worries and pay attention to what Jaehwan is saying, but it’s so hard when the Force is screaming at him to _listen_. It’s all he can do to cling to Jaehwan and be dragged along, lost in his own head, lost in the feeling of unease that settles around him like a cloak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've talked enough about the war now that linking these trailers will probably make sense rather than confuse y'all. 
> 
> SW:TOR (the game that gave me the universe for this fic) has produced a series of cinematic trailers depicting various events along the War’s timeline, and I'll link a couple here: [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm4JEZudf0c&ab_channel=swtheoldrepublic) depicts the beginning of the War (and a very young Satele Shan!) and [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAkcolVxDy0&ab_channel=swtheoldrepublic) depicts the fight on Alderaan, Taekwoon and Jaehwan's home planet (with more Satele badassery). Of course they're not mandatory to watch, but just thought I'd link them in case! :)


	4. Chapter 4

_**3644 BBY** _   
_**9 years since the Treaty of Coruscant** _

Sanghyuk really should be surprised to see Wonshik lounging around in customs on Coruscant waiting for them, but he isn’t, not at all. It’s not because of the Force, or anything—a Force vision about Wonshik wouldn’t be anything worthwhile having, anyway—but just because he knows Wonshik never misses a good fight no matter where it is. So when he bounds over to them, Sanghyuk can’t even muster up the energy to pretend to be surprised. Now that they’re planetside, the unease has settled into something a little more manageable, as long as he buries it at the back of his mind. It’s like the Force is pushing him towards the Temple, and the closer he gets the less gross he feels, like he’s doing the right thing. God only knows what that means. He’s too tired to bother examining it.

“The three musketeers!” Wonshik cries, drawing Hongbin in for a hug first, which earns him a pinch on the side from Sanghyuk. “I heard your radio chatter and thought I would come and join you. Is this something to do with your Sith?”

Folding his arms and raising an eyebrow, Taekwoon looks every bit the disinterested and detached Jedi—but Sanghyuk knows him well enough now to tell that he’s genuinely happy to see Wonshik. “He’s not _my_ Sith,” he points out. “What do you know?”

“Not much,” Wonshik starts as they begin walking out of the customs hall towards the taxi pad. “A great fucking Sith ship appeared in our airspace and everyone lost their shit. From what I could tell, they scrambled some fighters, but there were people rushing around to get the orbital AA guns online. Crazy stuff.”

“It was Jaehwan’s ship alright, but it wasn’t Jaehwan himself,” Sanghyuk says as they weave their way through the crowds. “He’s somewhere here.”

In all honesty, he’s trying desperately to keep his mind on the conversation, but he’s still overcome with the same wonder that he’s struck with whenever he gets to a new planet. This is the capital of the Republic, after all, and it’s hard not to be awed by it. He only wishes their visit was under better circumstances so he could actually enjoy himself; as it is he’s too worried about Jaehwan to want to do touristy things.

Wonshik nearly staggers at that. “What the fuck! He’s _here?_ A Sith on Coruscant?”

“Keep your voice down!” Taekwoon hisses as they spill out into the taxi terminal. “And don’t get any ideas about coming with us. This is Jedi business, and even Sanghyuk’s lucky that I’m letting him come along. You can stay here and monitor communications for us.”

“No complaints from me,” Wonshik replies, holding his hands in the air and shrugging. “I sure as hell don’t wanna go toe to toe with a Sith again. I’ll hold down the fort for you guys. You know, watch the exits, in case he decides to make a run for it from here.”

Right before they slide into a taxi, Sanghyuk tugs at Wonshik’s arm, getting his attention so he can glare at him. “Don’t think I’m skipping over the fact you’re on the Republic _capital_ of all places. We need to talk about that later,” he hisses.

Wonshik just winks cheerily and waves them goodbye as the taxi takes off—although his voice comes crackling over their holocoms a few seconds later, and they all fish them out from their belts in unison. “Everyone reading me loud and clear? Good. Just give me a heads up if you need backup. I’ll grudgingly come to your rescue. Maybe I’ll save Hongbin’s life again, just for fun.”

Taekwoon rolls his eyes and mutes his holocom, but Hongbin shakes it furiously like he’s shaking Wonshik himself. “Oh, get lost. As if you could do any better after being stuck with a Sith for that long.”

“I don’t plan on finding out,” Wonshik replies dryly, and Sanghyuk can hear his smile. “Right, Wonshik out.”

Considering they’re flying into Sanghyuk’s own personal version of hell—mingling with a Sith underneath the city in the ruins of a Jedi Temple isn’t his idea of fun, really—it’s nice to have Wonshik along for the ride, even if it’s just via holocom. Sanghyuk is surprised at how much he has missed the bounty hunter, and even if there is something niggling at him (why is Wonshik here? It can’t be coincidence) it’s still good to see him.

He peers out the taxi windows at the city-world speeding past, his mind empty, just enjoying the simple pleasure of sightseeing while he still can—all the while trying to block out the whirlwind of feelings that Taekwoon is blasting through the Force, feelings Sanghyuk doesn’t even know where to start with. There’s sadness, fear, a little bit of anger, and confusion, all wrapped up in a Taekwoon-shaped bundle. Secretly, Sanghyuk sneaks his hand through the gap in the two seats in front to twine their fingers together, just out of Hongbin’s view.

Taekwoon clutches tight to his hand the entire ride there.

//

The journey towards the Temple is relatively simple; Taekwoon had warned them that they might experience scavengers or looters on the way, since the undercity of Coruscant was thriving and had been for some time since the Sacking. The Jedi Temple has apparently been picked bare long ago, something that makes Hongbin frown, which Sanghyuk sort of understands—as much as he hated Tatooine, it was and is _his_ , and the thought of someone razing it all to the ground and picking through the rubble is insulting. The fact that this is a holy place for the Jedi—was a holy place—makes it worse.

Except, of course, the whole way towards the ruined Temple entrance they see no one. It may as well be a ghost town. There are signs of residence, of course: shops with their doors swinging open, food still cooking; toys left in the middle of the street; datapads still open to today’s news. All signs point to people who got up and left in a hurry, leaving behind their possessions; it makes Sanghyuk shiver.

“Sanghyuk,” Taekwoon murmurs, slowing to a stop. Ahead of them, Sanghyuk can see ruins that rise above the rest of the undercity, ruins that are unmistakably Jedi in origin. Just the sight of them calms him a little. “Listen. You cannot engage with Jaehwan. Whatever he does down there, promise me you won’t go after him.” Taekwoon’s voice is low, serious, and his eyebrows are knitted together. “He is more powerful than Hakyeon by a considerable amount. If you give him a chance he will not hold back. Stay out of the way.”

If he’s honest, Sanghyuk’s a little bit intimidated by that, and he can tell by Hongbin’s expression that he is too. He knew Jaehwan was powerful, of course—Taekwoon is incredibly powerful and Sanghyuk had sort of imagined Jaehwan to be the same—and he of course knows that Jaehwan can use Force lightning… But the seriousness in Taekwoon’s face, the way he’s clenching his fist, and the way Sanghyuk can feel his worries through the Force, stops him from cracking a joke and he nods, sliding his helmet over his head. “Okay. I won’t even look at him. I promise.” He tries to sound reassuring, but is pretty sure he fails because his voice cracks on the last syllable.

“More powerful than Hakyeon.” Hongbin’s voice echoes around the confined space as they walk through the entrance to the Temple, stepping carefully over the rubble. “Thanks for the warning.”

“You should always be prepared for anything, Knight Hongbin,” Taekwoon replies, and Sanghyuk is glad to hear a teasing lilt in his voice.

“In all seriousness, though,” Hongbin starts at a whisper, “where do you think he is?”

They have made their way into the ground floor lobby of the Temple, or what used to be the lobby. The shattered columns all around them are sort of melancholy, in a strange way; Sanghyuk is so used to the Temple on Tython that seeing one identical in ruins makes his stomach turn. He can’t imagine what it would have been like to be here on the day, seeing the destruction and death all around him—the fact that Taekwoon’s own Master is buried somewhere underneath the debris around them adds a whole new level to it all. Sanghyuk has never felt so on edge in his life, not even when they were traipsing up all those stairs to get to Hakyeon. If Hakyeon was able to toss him around so easily, Jaehwan could probably kill him with a sneeze if he wanted to.

“Use the Force and you’ll find him,” Taekwoon tells him.

It’s on instinct rather than a deliberate choice for Sanghyuk to tune into the Force, feeling as best he can, searching through the ghosts of the past to find a spark of something living—and he and Hongbin feel it at the same time, because they both gasp and recoil backwards. The dark side, Sanghyuk knows—it feels the same as Hakyeon felt but _worse_ , if such a thing was possible. Jaehwan is far away, deeper into the Temple, but now that Sanghyuk has tasted him it’s like he’s standing next to them, and he can’t get the sour taste out of his mouth.

They all set out without saying another word, heading deep into the bowels of the ruined Temple, following the foul stench of the dark side that is emanating through the Force in waves. The closer they get the worse it is, and Sanghyuk can feel that Jaehwan is… well, if he didn’t know any better he would say that Jaehwan is meditating, but he didn’t even know Sith _did_ that. And why would he be meditating? Presumably he came here to destroy, all that Sith know how to do, but meditating is a peaceful action, a passive one.

“He’s waiting for us,” Taekwoon murmurs, and Sanghyuk doesn’t know if he’s stating that out loud or picking up on Sanghyuk’s unspoken question through the Force—probably the latter. The words make him shiver, hammering the point home that what they’re about to do really could be the death of them all.

The old Council chambers are still relatively intact, to Sanghyuk’s surprise—moreso than the rest of the Temple—and so he’s too busy goggling at the familiar architecture that’s so similar to Tython to notice the figure kneeling in the middle of the room, but when he does he freezes in place.

Jaehwan.

Heeding Taekwoon’s warning, mindful of the desperate tone in his voice and the worry that he can feel radiating off him in waves, Sanghyuk steps to the side, shielding himself behind a cracked pillar. He can still see, but the focus is most definitely not on him. He can’t help himself from drawing one of his blasters, though, because Taekwoon and Hongbin have their hands on their lightsabers as they approach, and he figures it’s best to follow their lead. He is way, way out of his depth.

“Brother.”

Jaehwan’s voice is silky smooth as he gets up and turns, and Sanghyuk has to bite his lip hard to not gasp at the sight of him. He’d only ever really gotten a cursory glance at Jaehwan’s face that night on Tatooine, and it had told him everything he needed to know— _Sith_. Now that he’s quite literally staring at the face of the evil he’s heard so much about, he’s so in awe he doesn’t know what to feel. Jaehwan has a profile that catches the light exquisitely, the shadows falling over his face in sharp angles and lines. He’s pale, paler than Taekwoon, and Sanghyuk doesn’t know if that’s because of him or because of the dark side’s influence. Instead of the stately neutral-coloured Jedi robes, he’s wearing long, draping robes of black, and a black cloak over that. Worst of all, though, are those eyes, glowing a horrible yellow-orange at them through the dappled light, a visual representation of the monster he has allowed himself to become.

“Don’t call me that,” Taekwoon replies, his voice even and steady and sure. “I am not your brother.”

Jaehwan puts his hand on his lightsaber, and in sync the Jedi ignite theirs, the purple and green reflecting around the whole room. “You were, once,” Jaehwan reminds him softly. “You cannot outrun the past.”

“At least I’m not reveling in it.”

The smile that stretches across Jaehwan’s face is chilling, and Sanghyuk doesn’t miss the way Hongbin’s lightsaber wavers, just a tiny bit. He’s trying to stay away from touching the Force, lest Jaehwan senses it and realises he’s here, but even he can feel the insidious, eerie coldness of the dark side lingering everywhere. “If you think this is a trip to bask in old memories, you are sorely mistaken,” Jaehwan replies, igniting his lightsaber and stepping into a combat stance, his movements fluid. “I did not come here to antagonise you, although I do enjoy seeing you get so worked up.” Taekwoon opens his mouth to reply, but Jaehwan shakes his head. “You can’t hide anything from me. I know you too well.”

“Who are you?” Taekwoon murmurs, his lightsabers trembling. The tension in the room is so thick Sanghyuk could cut it with a knife, and his heart is racing so fast he’s sure Jaehwan can hear it from across the room. “I knew you died that day, but I don’t even recognise what you’ve been reborn as.”

Jaehwan’s eyes flash, and in one sudden movement he steps forward. Taekwoon blocks him, and their faces are so close together they’re almost touching. “I am the future of the Sith,” he hisses, and laughs. “You are nothing.”

Hongbin moves to strike at his exposed side, but in the flash of an eye Jaehwan flips away on top of a nearby column, and before anyone can move he reaches into his robe and pulls out a detonator. Sanghyuk is already stepping out from his hiding place and aiming down the barrel of his blasters, but by then it’s too late, and Jaehwan’s thumb presses the button on the detonator right as he fires a shot. It glances away, missing terribly, as the floor buckles underneath them and the rest of the Temple starts to come falling down around their ears. Taekwoon tackles him, pulling him backwards with an arm around his waist, but all Sanghyuk can see is Jaehwan, perched on top of the column, swinging his lightsaber back and forth and watching as the three of them turn.

“Run!” Taekwoon screams.

The noise is unbelievable—a roar louder than anything Sanghyuk’s ever heard before, and he’s only dimly aware of the others next to him, sprinting with lightsabers drawn back towards the way they came. The world is noise and debris and dust, and he coughs terribly as a column crashes to the ground in front of them. Hongbin leaps over it neatly without even hesitating, and Sanghyuk is just about to jump as well—knowing full well that he isn’t a Jedi and won’t be able to make it—when he is lifted over the column and flung violently forward, landing on his feet with bits of ceiling crashing in around him. Taekwoon is on him before he can even get up, and with an arm around Sanghyuk’s waist they sprint together towards the door, the only light being the purple glow of Taekwoon’s lightsaber.

They leap through the door at the last second, Taekwoon throwing him forward again, and when they crash to the ground the horrible noise is still as loud as ever but they’re no longer being pelted by rubble, and they’re safe, for now. Dazed and bruised, but safe.

“Bastard,” Sanghyuk yells, getting to his feet and turning to head back inside, stopped only by Hongbin grabbing him at the last second. “Fucking stupid Sith fucking bastard!” He kicks out, but Hongbin is stronger than him, and isn’t letting him go.

“Calm down.” Taekwoon reaches out to touch him on the forehead, the horrible noise of the Temple falling down around them finally having ceased. The touch is soothing, so he stops wriggling, but glares balefully up at the Jedi. “We need to go.”

Sanghyuk wriggles his way free of Hongbin’s arms, breathing heavily, and wrenches his helmet off. They’re standing in another part of the Temple, which looks just the same as it did when they came in: ruined. Except now it’s covered in a layer of fine dust, and when he turns to look behind him, all he can see is a wall of rubble and wreckage where before there was a doorway. The difference is staggering, and he nearly falls to his knees. He’s barely even paying attention to what Hongbin’s saying, he’s too busy staring in awe at the twisted mess of metal and concrete.

“Go? Where are we going? God knows where he is by now. Probably making his way offworld.”

When Sanghyuk turns, putting his helmet back on, Taekwoon looks so steely and resolute that he takes a step back inadvertently. “Back to the ship. I’ll explain once we’re there.”

They are halfway back to the taxi pad when their holocoms all beep, and, in unison, Wonshik’s voice begins booming out from all three. “Uh, guys? What the _hell_ did you do down there? Was there some kind of earthquake?”

Hongbin and Taekwoon don’t even move to touch their holocoms, they just keep striding forward, so Sanghyuk fishes his off his belt and presses the button to turn on the picture. Wonshik is standing there, wringing his hands, and Sanghyuk smiles underneath his helmet. At least _he_ is alright. “You could say that. Jaehwan brought the rest of the Temple down on our heads. Or he tried to.”

“Wow.” Wonshik shakes his head. “Him and your Jedi must have some serious beef. Do you guys need a pickup or anything?”

Even though it’s hardly the time or place, it puts a small smile on Sanghyuk’s face to hear Taekwoon referred to as _his_ Jedi. He hasn’t told Wonshik a thing, not explicitly, but Wonshik had figured it out pretty quickly, mainly due to the fact that whenever they called Sanghyuk just couldn’t keep a smile off his face whenever he mentioned Taekwoon. That, and Wonshik had seen their spats on Nar Shaddaa first-hand, so he’d pieced it together. “No, that’s okay,” he replies, seeing the taxi pad in front of them. “But could you tell T7 to get the ship prepped for takeoff? I, uh, get the feeling Taekwoon wants to leave, like, yesterday.”

“You’re going to have to explain everything to me later,” sighs Wonshik before hanging up the call abruptly.

Sanghyuk shoves the holocom back on his belt right as they swing into a taxi, slamming the doors behind them. He has no idea what the sense of urgency is for, since they nearly just _died_ , and he’d kind of like to have a breather before they have to jet off to god-knows-where. It would be really nice to just slow down for two seconds and go to a bar, or something, especially as it’s his first time on Coruscant. But he takes one look at the stormy look on Taekwoon’s face and swallows every word he was about to say. Now is certainly not the time for that. Now is the time for action, apparently. He tries to tamp down the feelings of panic that swell up and threaten to overwhelm him whenever he thinks about facing Jaehwan again, but the entire taxi ride back to the spaceport he spends shaking in the back seat, feeling small and very, very alone.

//

The moment they’re onboard Taekwoon tells T7 to prep the hyperdrive, making his way to the bridge with such a hurry the other two practically fall over themselves to follow. By the time Sanghyuk has unsuited in his bedroom, they’re nearly in orbit, and when he makes his way back to the bridge Taekwoon is already punching in coordinates in the hyperspace computer.

“Hey, no, no way,” Hongbin says firmly, shouldering past Sanghyuk to place his hand over the hyperspace lever. “You can’t just pull stunts like this and not tell us where we’re going. We’re a team, and you’re not being much of a team player right now. So tell us what’s going on.”

“I didn’t know you were a football coach in your spare time,” murmurs Sanghyuk to Hongbin, folding his arms over his chest. “But I agree. We need to work together. What’s up?”

Taekwoon’s shoulders are hunched as he turns to face them, his hair falling in waves around his face. He looks both pissed-off and miserable simultaneously, which Sanghyuk didn’t even know was possible. “I’m sick and tired of Jaehwan’s games. I know where he’ll take me next, and I’d much rather get the jump on him than wait for that alarm to go off again.”

“Okay. You could have just _told_ us that,” Hongbin reminds him. “We’re in this fight together.”

“You’re right, Hongbin. I apologise.” Taekwoon smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Sometimes I forget how wise you’ve become.”

Hongbin shrugs as he turns to take a seat next to Taekwoon. “Certainly didn’t learn it from you,” he replies, but his tone is light and Sanghyuk catches the smile they exchange.

“Where are we going?” Sanghyuk butts in, making his way over to the holonet terminal and dialing in Wonshik’s number somewhat absentmindedly. They’ll have to tell Satele, as well, but right now he just wants to debrief with a friend. No doubt Wonshik has questions about how quickly they left, too, since he’d waved them away with a frown on his face.

“We’re going to Ilum.” When Sanghyuk looks over his shoulder, all he can see of Taekwoon is his hands gripping the hyperspace lever so hard his knuckles are turning white. Hongbin is frowning, and he catches Sanghyuk’s eyes, looking troubled.

Ilum. Right. Sanghyuk has never been, but he would have no reason to. It’s a sacred planet to the Jedi; from what he understands it’s where they gather the crystals for their lightsabers, before forging the lightsaber itself in a ritual. He never really paid any attention to it, although he would occasionally see a shuttle arriving back to Tython, from Ilum, filled with a group of young Padawans showing off their new lightsabers to anyone in the vicinity. No doubt Jaehwan is there to blow up the crystal caves or something equally as heinous… Although that doesn’t explain how Taekwoon knows he will strike there next.

“Sanghyuk? What the fuck was that about?” Wonshik blurts the moment he picks up the call. Sanghyuk glances behind him at the two Jedi, who are engrossed in flying the ship, before punching a button to transfer the call to his personal holocom and wandering down the hallway with it in hand.

“I don’t even know where to begin explaining.” He flops down on his bed dramatically and flings an arm over his eyes. “This is a fucking nightmare.”

“Maybe start by reminding me why Taekwoon is hunting down this lunatic in the first place. He’s just one Sith. Surely you guys can just go after someone else? Someone less deadly?”

“I don’t think the Sith _get_ less deadly. Deadly is their MO.”

Wonshik snorts. “Okay. Fair point. Start at the beginning, then.”

The beginning. Right. Sanghyuk obliges, although it’s kind of hard to tell Wonshik the beginning of a story he knows nothing about. Taekwoon still won’t tell him any details of his past with Jaehwan, no matter how hard he tries. It’s like drawing blood out of a stone. At this point he has practically given up. Taekwoon is determined to keep the past locked away, out of sight, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

 

**_3653 BBY_ **   
**_28 years since the start of the Great Galactic War_ **   
**_The year of the Treaty of Coruscant_ **

Jaehwan had found his crystal hours ago. In fact, he’d found it and had enough time to perform the ritual—the Jedi had built a small Temple here for that exact purpose—before making his way back to Taekwoon, who is still combing through the caves, going deeper into the cave structures. He’d found two small blue crystals, and had picked them up because they were pretty, but knew they weren’t right for his lightsabers, the empty hilts of which are hanging on his belts still, just crying out to be used.

“Will you be careful with that?” he growls irritably over his shoulder at Jaehwan, who is swinging his lightsaber back and forth, the green glow bouncing off his face and making him look alien.

Jaehwan just rolls his eyes and spins delicately, stabbing at an imaginary foe behind him. “Will you relax? Just because I’m not a master swordsman like you doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Taekwoon turns away and continues striding forward, holding his torch a little closer to him and clenching his teeth together so they don’t chatter. It’s not the first jibe Jaehwan has made to him on this trip, and it most certainly won’t be the last. If you’d asked him a few years ago he would have said it was just playful banter, but now whenever Jaehwan makes barbs there’s an undercurrent of genuine malice there, something that sours Taekwoon’s tongue. He wishes he could go back to the times where there was nothing but innocence between them, nothing but brotherly love—although sometimes a small part of him whispers that maybe that’s all in his head, that there has always been animosity between them and he was just too blind to see it.

“What if we get stuck in here forever?” Jaehwan doesn’t sound too worried, although that’s a thought that’s crossed Taekwoon’s mind more than once. “Wandering the crystal caves until we died. I would have to eat you for sustenance. What do you think the Council would think of that?”

Taekwoon turns to chide him for his disgusting joke, and it’s then that he sees them—a formation of purple crystals, set in a small alcove tilted towards them so he hadn’t seen it when he was walking past. Jaehwan notices his gaze and turns to look, his eyes widening too. “Oh, they’re beautiful.”

Almost as if in a trance, Taekwoon dreamily walks over to the crystals, and reaches out to touch one. The moment he makes contact with it a jolt runs through him, through the Force, and it feels so right that when he looks at Jaehwan he has a huge grin stretched over his face and feels almost giddy beyond belief.

Jaehwan takes one look at him and raises an eyebrow. “I felt it too. Those really are your crystals, huh? Alright, then. Grab them and we’ll head back to the Temple.”

Taekwoon does, and when he reaches to pull them out the crystals come away from the rock easily. He clutches them in his fists the entire long traipse back to the entrance of the cave, which is set at the back of the Temple, smiling widely the entire way. The crystals are humming in his hands, and he keeps looking at them as if he’s not sure they’re really his. He has a long few hours ahead—it had taken Jaehwan two hours to craft his lightsaber, and Taekwoon has two to do—but never before has he felt more of a Jedi than now.

//

He got the first lightsaber done in record time. It only took an hour and a half for him to assemble it, putting all the pieces together and meditating over it until the lightsaber assembled itself in front of him. When he weighed it in his hand, it felt right, just like the crystals did—and when he turned it on to see that beautiful purple glow, he knew that this was _his_ lightsaber, his and his alone. He didn’t have time to play with it, though; he still had to craft another, with a slightly different but matching hilt design.

He feels it the moment the last component on the second lightsaber clicks into place, and it sends him reeling, clutching his chest like he’s having a heart attack. Jaehwan bursts in the room—which technically isn’t allowed; it’s an offence to interrupt such a sacred ritual, but Taekwoon is too busy being staggered by the pain washing through the Force in waves to care—and collapses on the floor next to him, his eyes rolling back in his head. Blearily, Taekwoon wraps his hands around his lightsabers, in case whatever darkness they feel is coming for them here, but he can’t do much more than that. Hundreds of voices, screaming of betrayal before being silenced suddenly—he can barely _breathe_. What does this mean?

“Coruscant,” Jaehwan gasps, nothing but the white of his eyes showing. “I see Coruscant.”

Blindly, he flails around for Taekwoon’s hand and catches his wrist instead, and immediately Taekwoon sees what he does: dozens of lightsabers, red ones, clashing with the blue and green of the Jedi Masters at the Temple on Coruscant. The _Sith_ on Coruscant. The Treaty was being signed today, on Alderaan. What—what could have gone so horrifically wrong? Jaehwan’s fingernails tear into his wrist as a new vision hits him, and Taekwoon only has a moment to put his lightsabers down before he sees—he sees—

Master Zen Vallow, Jaehwan’s Master, being impaled by the blood-red lightsaber of a Sith.

“You were deceived,” the Sith says, before pulling his lightsaber out of Zen’s abdomen and turning away. All Taekwoon can see in the sky are the hideous flagships of the Empire, the fighters zooming in to bomb the Temple around him, the loud bangs and shudders of his world falling down around him making him jump.

“Jaehwan,” Taekwoon gasps, coming back to himself and crawling towards the door. The horrible feeling of death is still crippling him, because all he can feel is the magnitude of destruction being wreaked on Coruscant as they speak, but some instinct in him is calling him there. “Jaehwan, let’s go.”

Jaehwan screams behind him, a horrible guttural sound, and when Taekwoon turns back he sees him curled up into a ball on the floor, visions wracking him violently. “Hyung,” he sobs, and Taekwoon pulls him into his lap, stroking his head. “Hyung, I see them all—”

“Show me,” Taekwoon murmurs hoarsely, reaching down to hold Jaehwan’s hand.

Together, they ride out the visions, Taekwoon seeing everything Jaehwan does. He sees his own Master, Yanila, fall almost immediately, feels her death through the Force. It hits him like a sledgehammer, and when he comes out of that vision he realises his face is wet and tears are dripping onto Jaehwan’s face, mingling with his own. He goes to wipe them, but Jaehwan writhes with another vision, and he’s gone again.

Jaehwan sees everything. He sees every single death of every Jedi. Together they watch half the Council fall to Sith blades; together they see the Supreme Chancellor being assassinated in his chambers; together they watch their Temple get bombed into a smoking pile of rubble. It takes hours, but they see it all, Jaehwan having stopped moaning and crying long ago.

When it finishes, Jaehwan sits up slowly, his face a blank mask, and stares at Taekwoon like he doesn’t even recognise him. “We have to… We… Where do we go?”

For the first time in his life, Taekwoon doesn’t have an answer. Never before has he witnessed such cold-blooded destruction carried out in a precise manner, and he’s been living though a war his whole life. He doesn’t know what to do, where to go, who to talk to; both their Masters are dead, and half the Council is gone. They have nothing left but each other, huddled in a Temple in the freezing cold—nothing but each other and their lightsabers, laying at their feet, useless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The third and final trailer—and my personal favourite—can be found [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdgmH9Vv2-I&ab_channel=swtheoldrepublic), and depicts the Sacking of Coruscant :~)


	5. Chapter 5

**_3644 BBY_ **   
**_9 years since the Treaty of Coruscant_ **

“We need to talk.”

Taekwoon’s eyes snap open, and the golden glow fades around him as he slumps his shoulders. He pushes his hair back from his face, and Sanghyuk realises he looks tired. Sometimes in the middle of the night he wakes to Taekwoon meditating, or reading, or doing anything but sleeping; somehow he knows that this exhaustion runs deeper than that, though. Taekwoon’s been after Jaehwan for five years now, and now the fight is nearing its end he must be drained after all he’s seen.

“We do,” Taekwoon sighs, patting the floor next to him. Obediently, Sanghyuk sits down beside him, crossing his legs automatically like Satele taught him. “What’s on your mind?”

Slowly, so not to spook him, Sanghyuk reaches out for Taekwoon’s hand and twines their fingers together. “I love you. You know that. But I can’t help feeling like… like there’s things you’re not telling me. About you and Jaehwan, I mean. You’re so wrapped up in your past you’re starting to miss the world in front of you.”

The pain is so blatantly readable on Taekwoon’s face that Sanghyuk instantly regrets bringing it up. He can’t even begin to imagine how much this hurts; he only catches glimpses of it now and then, when Taekwoon lets the mask slip. “I’m not intentionally withholding things from you,” Taekwoon tells him, reaching up to run a hand through Sanghyuk’s hair, ending up on his cheek. “I’ve never told anyone about Jaehwan, not even Hongbin. This is my default state.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” Sanghyuk leans into the touch, closing his eyes and sighing. Even now, when he’s so sure of things between them, he still can’t quite believe that this has all worked out the way it has. He would do anything to keep Taekwoon by his side. “Part of being with someone is sharing. Just because the Jedi tell you to repress your emotions doesn’t mean that they’re _right_. Bottling up all your feelings isn’t good.”

“The Jedi teach dealing with emotions in mature and appropriate ways, not ‘bottling them up’… But I understand the sentiment.” Taekwoon leans forward to press the gentlest of kisses on Sanghyuk’s lips, just a breath of air, and Sanghyuk whines for more. “What do you want to know about Jaehwan?”

Woah. Okay. He hadn’t expected that. He really thought Taekwoon would push him away again, slam those doors shut, refuse to answer any questions. But this is an offering, and he’d be stupid to turn it away, so he thinks for a moment before finally deciding on an answer. “Tell me something nice about him.”

Taekwoon’s voice is dreamy, soft, and it’s all too easy for Sanghyuk to rest his head on the Jedi’s shoulder and drift away, letting him paint a picture with his words. “He had the wickedest sense of humour. He was always joking around, always pushing my buttons, always testing the line. He did it with the Council, too. You think Hongbin is bad at backtalking them… Jaehwan was on another level. They took it in stride, though. Probably because he was so talented. We made quite the team.”

“What was he good at?”

“He was excellent at using Force powers, like telekinesis. He could throw me around a room by the time he was six. I got him back using my blades, though—that’s what I was good at. He used the elemental powers, I had my lightsabers, and together we were meant to be unstoppable. The Council’s poster boys. Roguish good looks and all.”

Sanghyuk elbows him, happy to hear a smile in his voice. “Tell me a story about him. A funny one.”

“Easy,” Taekwoon replies. “He was _terrified_ of bugs. I saw him face off against Sith lords, and Rancors thrice his size, and he wouldn’t even flinch. But put an insect on him and he would have a meltdown. Once we were on Nal Hutta, which is a very swampy, very hot, very humid planet. Perfect for insects.”

“And Hutts,” Sanghyuk mutters gloomily. Nar Shaddaa is Nal Hutta’s moon, and he’s had enough of that damn system to last a lifetime.

“And Hutts. Anyway, the Council had sent us there to oversee some deal the Hutts were making with the Senate. We hadn’t been summoned, and we were just waiting around, so Jaehwan went to take a nap… And when he woke up, he had the biggest spider I had ever seen just sitting on his face. He screamed so loud the Hutts sent their guards to investigate, and when they came in they found him wrapped around me, begging me to kill it. I did, but I never let him forget that.”

Sanghyuk can see it so well: a younger, happier Taekwoon, with Jaehwan practically crying while clinging to him. The idea that those boys grew into a slightly disillusioned Jedi and a Sith Lord is hard to fathom, but he isn’t about to point that out. It’s enough that Taekwoon is sharing this with him, words he’s never spoken to another living soul. The ship is just as cold as ever, but he feels warm from the inside out as he snuggles close to Taekwoon, content.

“Tell me another one.”

//

Just like always, the approach to a new planet is no less exciting, although Sanghyuk is a little intimidated by this one. He’s read about snow, and he’s watched vids on the holonet of it, but he’s never seen it—and now the planet they’re going to is _covered_ in it. He can’t even work out the shape of continents, if it even has any; all there is is white, covered in swirling white clouds. His eyes are wide as they approach, and when he turns around he sees Hongbin watching him with a big fat smirk on his face.

“Please tell me we have winter coats or something,” Sanghyuk murmurs, his breath fogging up the glass on the window.

“Oh, this is nothing. You should try going to Hoth. You can’t be outside there for more than a few hours before you freeze to death. Ilum is nothing in comparison.”

“How the hell can you sound so cheery about this?” Sanghyuk whirls to see Hongbin laughing so hard he’s wheezing. “I get cold on _this_ fucking ship. I will actually die out there. I’ll become an icicle.”

“Both of you, enough.” Taekwoon’s tone is sharp, and he glares at the other two for a moment before looking back at his screen. “Hongbin, get on the comms and radar. I want to know if any ship comes out of hyperspace within a hundred klicks of us. Sanghyuk, start scanning the planet. Focus on the area around the Temple—your scanners will pick it up automatically.”

Sanghyuk doesn’t even have the gall to roll his eyes, not when the stakes are this high and Taekwoon’s fears are justifiable. Instead he just makes his way to the console that Taekwoon waves at to boot up the scanner, catching Hongbin’s eyes and frowning slightly. The cockpit falls into silence as Taekwoon guides them down, Sanghyuk letting the computer scan away, not finding anything of note—in fact it doesn’t look like anyone has been here for months. There’s certainly no sign of Jaehwan or his ship, and he reports this to Taekwoon as they’re landing.

Taekwoon brings them down on the ice directly in front of the Temple—when Sanghyuk looks out the window, which is quickly fogging up, he can see the entrance just outside. It’s smaller than the Temple on Tython, and miniscule compared to the one on Coruscant, but his interest is piqued when he sees clusters of pretty blue and green crystals growing around the entrance, just out in the open. How does the rest of the galaxy not know about this?

“I thought you said Jaehwan was going to be here,” Sanghyuk says as he turns, punching a button on the console next to Taekwoon to equalise pressure in the airlock.

Taekwoon smiles, but it’s the ghost of a smile, really. “Have some faith, nau’kara,” he murmurs, and the moment the words are out of his mouth the awfully familiar alarm blares.

They aren’t even surprised by it anymore. The first time they were all running around panicked; now Sanghyuk suits up slowly, and when he makes his way back to the cockpit he sees Hongbin wrapping a heavy winter cloak around himself with a definite resigned air. It’s not that this is any less terrifying, particularly as Sanghyuk knows Jaehwan is bearing down on them as they speak—it’s just that this seems to be a pattern, now. How many planets bore witness to the slow birth of Jaehwan the Sith? How many different systems will Jaehwan drag them to in order to relive the past? Sanghyuk is getting fed up, and as Hongbin thrusts a cloak in his direction (and then reconsiders, and thrusts another) he can sense that he’s not exactly happy with it either.

The first thing Sanghyuk notices when he steps outside is the blinding, bitter cold—he’s never felt anything like it, and hesitates at the top of the ramp, not wanting to go any further. He’s wrapped in two cloaks, and the rudimentary heating system on his armour is working overtime, and yet the moment the first gust of frigid wind hits him it nearly brings him to his knees. Never before has he realised that growing up underneath two suns would have such a disadvantage; as he makes his way down the ramp his teeth are chattering and his hands start to shake. He’s certainly not in any shape to fight, if it does come to that at all. He’s not really sure what Taekwoon has in mind, bringing them here. They don’t have the element of surprise. Jaehwan knows exactly where they are. It just seems like a bloodbath in the making, to him, but no one’s asked his opinion so he doesn’t volunteer it. Once again he is swimming far out of his depth, on the verge of drowning—but that seems to be the new normal, now.

Wordlessly, Taekwoon kneels on the ice a few meters in front of their ship and begins to meditate. It’s such an absurd sight—even if he does look gorgeous with the snow swirling around him and catching in his hair—that Sanghyuk stares for a few moments before kneeling slowly and trying his best to touch the Force, too, figuring it can’t hurt. It even works, temporarily—the Force is closer to him when Taekwoon and Hongbin are both meditating next to him, so it’s relatively easy for him to float away and relax totally, forgetting the cold and the wind and just breathing in and out, existing, feeling the Force flow through him and through the others. He doesn’t know how long they sit there for. He doesn’t even realise that time is passing until he feels the dark side start to rise, getting stronger, and when he opens his eyes he sees Jaehwan’s ship descending through the clouds towards them.

His connection to the Force evaporates, and all that replaces it is a bone-chilling fear that’s somehow colder than the wind. The ship is just as menacing as when he first saw it, but now there’s no excitement to temper the menace: it’s just sleek and frightening, and it takes all his strength not to get up and run back into their ship as it lands on the ice a way in front of them.

“Breathe,” Taekwoon reminds them, not raising his head, not breaking from his trance. His voice is calm, devoid of emotion. “They are Sith, but we are Jedi. Trust in the Force.”

“May the Force be with us,” Hongbin whispers, the wind snatching his words and carrying them away.

Two figures exit the ship and start making their way across the ice towards them, lightsabers drawn but not ignited. Hakyeon is wrapped up in a long black cloak that drags on the ground behind him—Sanghyuk catches a glimpse of his face when the wind rips the hood back, and shudders—but Jaehwan is wearing nothing but his black robes, his face turned to the wind like he relishes in the cold. They stop a few meters in front of Taekwoon, and Sanghyuk clenches his teeth to stop them chattering. He feels hideously exposed.

“Clever Taekwoon. You figured out the next piece in the puzzle,” Jaehwan sneers, and extends his lightsaber. “And you’ve brought your friends. How nice.”

Hakyeon doesn’t say anything, just lowers the hood of his robe, and Sanghyuk glances to the side to see Hongbin glaring so hard it looks like he’s about to burst into flames. Taekwoon, though, doesn’t reply, just rises from the ice slowly, the very image of serenity and grace. His purple lightsabers reflect violet on the ice when he ignites them, and Sanghyuk draws his blasters, mirroring the movement.

“You’re a psychopath,” Hongbin deadpans, pointing his lightsaber at Jaehwan, his eyes narrowed. “All the Sith are, but you’re worse than most. You and your _slave.”_

Hakyeon steps into an offensive stance, teeth bared in a snarl, but Jaehwan raises his hand, a smile on his face. It looks horribly out of place. “Why, Taekwoon, your Padawan has more spirit than you do. Did you try and temper him?” Jaehwan’s voice is silky smooth, and surprisingly pleasant to listen to.

“Enough!”

Taekwoon’s voice rings out across the ice, and the Sith’s eyes widen—Hakyeon even takes a minute step back. His every movement rings with power as he takes a step closer to Jaehwan, his lightsabers readied, his face hard. “Enough of these games, Jaehwan. I will not be your pawn any longer. You cannot attempt to control me by taking me to places where we grew together. I will not be made a slave to my past!”

With a guttural, awful roar, Jaehwan rushes forward, but Taekwoon is ready for him and dodges away neatly. Sanghyuk only has a moment to take in what’s happening before Hongbin leaps over him, lightsaber poised to strike, aiming for Hakyeon’s heart.

Things happen in slow motion, after that, and it’s hard to know where to look—Hongbin and Hakyeon are going at it fiercely, Hongbin forcing Hakyeon back across the ice step by step, their lightsabers moving so fast they’re just blurs of coloured light. On the contrary, Jaehwan and Taekwoon look fluid. If Sanghyuk didn’t know better he would say that they were dancing an elaborately choreographed routine; instead he knows that he is seeing two men who know each other as only family do fight as best they can. He crouches, and aims down his sights at Jaehwan’s back, but Jaehwan is too fast and spins away before he can get a clear shot. He can’t risk taking a shot at Taekwoon, anyway.

Sanghyuk had believed Taekwoon when he said he was the better swordsman, but it’s tempered by Jaehwan’s mastery of Force abilities: he swings at Taekwoon with one hand and shoots lightning with the other, the purple bolts crashing across the ice and making Sanghyuk shy away. He hasn’t seen that lightning in his dreams for an age, now, but the sight of it sends him reeling backwards, gasping freezing air into his lungs. Taekwoon blocks it with one lightsaber expertly, but Jaehwan takes advantage of the next time he leaps into the air and pushes him away with the Force so he goes sailing away several meters, where he lands agilely, his lightsabers dragging along the ice. The expression on his face, when he looks up, is chilling: peaceful to a point where it’s frightening. Sanghyuk knows he has rage simmering in him—five years worth of rage—but he doesn’t touch it, doesn’t even go near it. Instead, when he attacks Jaehwan with a volley of strikes to force him back several steps, he is entirely emotionless. The void in him is something Sanghyuk doesn’t like to feel, because it’s so unnatural, but he knows that as long as Taekwoon lets the Force flow through him instead of using his emotions he is invincible.

He feels so utterly useless, crouched by the side of the ship as the two battles rage around them. Jaehwan is moving so fast that he can’t get a clear shot, and Hongbin is in the way of a shot at Hakyeon’s back. The sensory overload is almost too much as he looks back and forth between the four, completely unsure of what to do. He may as well be running in circles around them naked, for all the attention anyone is paying to him. Except… except no one is even _looking_ at him. Which may be to his advantage. He doesn’t have a clear shot at either of them, but his blasters are not his only weapons.

Carefully, he holsters his blasters and looks down at his hands, breathing in and out slowly and trying to connect to the Force. He feels it flow through him, and when he stands up and steps out towards Hakyeon—not noticing Jaehwan’s attention snap onto him—it’s as easy and natural as breathing to let the Force take control of him, to pick Hakyeon up and slam him into the ground. It barely does any damage at all, and Hakyeon scrambles to his feet to block Hongbin’s next slash right away, but Sanghyuk can’t even focus because he’s too busy staring at his hands like they don’t even belong to him. He did _that?_

“Sanghyuk,” Taekwoon yells.

He turns, but then he’s swept off his feet, being held in the air—by Jaehwan, who is looking at him like it’s the first time he’s seen him, despite the fact that he was next to Taekwoon the whole time. Taekwoon throws out his hand, trying to pull Sanghyuk towards him, but Jaehwan clenches his fist—and with a rush of air that hits him so hard he’s instantly winded, their combined Force powers shove everyone back so violently the ground shakes. Sanghyuk goes flying back, and the last thing he sees before he hits the side of the ship is Taekwoon screaming his name.

//

The desert stretches on forever, but it’s all he’s ever known.

He didn’t realise how much he missed it, but now he’s back here it feels so right he can barely stand it. The sand underneath his feet; the twin suns; the sand dunes that feel so much like home; Mos Espa behind him; the ghost of his mother surrounding him. Tatooine. He is home. He is _warm_.

He smiles, and floats away.

//

When he opens his eyes, the world swims.

It’s hard to reconcile where he was—somewhere icy, somewhere cold, a planet he’d never been to before—with the ceiling that he sees above him, most definitely _not_ icy and cold, and when he struggles up on his elbows he sees he’s in a room in what must be the Temple. That’s the only place that he knows has architecture like this. It doesn’t explain why he’s aching all over, and why his head is pounding like it got run over, though, and when he goes to sit up he whimpers involuntarily.

“You’re awake.”

Taekwoon gently pushes him back down again, brushes the hair away from his face, grasps his hand firmly. He looks so worried that Sanghyuk instantly feels bad, even though he doesn’t remember what he did to end up like this. This feels worse than when Hakyeon threw him into the wall—what the hell happened to him? “How did I get here?” he asks, noticing his voice is hoarse and rough.

“Do you not remember?” Taekwoon strokes his forehead softly, and he relaxes into the touch. “We were on Ilum. Jaehwan and Hakyeon were there.”

Sanghyuk jerks involuntarily as it all comes rushing back at once—Jaehwan’s hideous yellow eyes; the way he’d stared at Sanghyuk like he was staring through his armour and into his soul; the way Taekwoon had tried to pull him back… and then nothing. A scream, a gasp, nothing. “What happened? What did he do to me? Is Hongbin okay?” he chokes out, trying to struggle out of Taekwoon’s grasp.

“Settle,” Taekwoon says sternly, and Sanghyuk reluctantly obeys. “Hongbin is fine. He’s meditating somewhere, probably. Jaehwan and I… The kickback from our powers sent you straight into the side of the ship. Your helmet shattered completely, and you fractured your skull.” Sanghyuk’s eyes widen, and he clenches Taekwoon’s hand desperately. “Hakyeon and Jaehwan left straight after that. I took you here, to Tython. You’ve spent a day in a bacta tank.”

“God…” he breathes, processing. The amount of force that would have been required for his helmet to shatter completely, fracturing his skull in the process, is off the charts. Taekwoon and Jaehwan are deadly when they’re together. At least he’s still alive, albeit with a pounding head. “Why wouldn’t they… Why wouldn’t they finish you off?”

The look in Taekwoon’s eyes says more than his words do. “I don’t know.”

“Well? What the hell are we waiting for?” Sanghyuk replies, knocking Taekwoon’s arm away and swinging his legs off the bed, standing up and wobbling. His sense of balance is completely off—although whether that’s thanks to the fracture or the bacta tank, he doesn’t know. “Do you know where they are now? We have to finish this.”

Satele’s voice rings out from across the room, and Sanghyuk turns automatically, forgetting that his legs aren’t working as they should and nearly falling. Taekwoon catches him with a hand under the elbow, helping him back onto the bed. “Because it’s too dangerous.” She approaches the bed, her arms folded over her chest, eyes narrowed. “You nearly died, Sanghyuk. Jaehwan has clearly become a lot more powerful than the Council predicted.”

“So? Taekwoon will know what to do next time.”

“No.” Her tone is sharp, but her gaze softens. “I can’t risk losing two of my best Jedi, not when things are so dire. We’re predicting the Empire will invade in a matter of months. We have bigger things to worry about than one single Sith.”

This time when he gets up, his legs are strong and steady, and he juts his chin. Normally he doesn’t notice that he towers over her, but today it’s coming to his advantage. “Bullshit. You said it yourself! He’s instrumental to the Dark Council, which—”

“I said no. Taekwoon and Hongbin are being reassigned, and you’re staying here at the Temple with me. You are too great an asset to risk.”

Sanghyuk finds that entirely hard to believe. All he’s done since he arrived on the Council’s doorstep is create problems for them, and by extension, Taekwoon and Hongbin. He isn’t an asset to _anyone_ , never has been. All he has is a healthy dose of luck and a steady hand, and that’s nothing if the galaxy really comes to blows again. He doesn’t know the Council’s real motivation for this order, but he doesn’t particularly care. He has had enough.

“With respect, Master,” he says softly, “I don’t take orders from you. I am not a Jedi.”

Satele doesn’t reply to that. She doesn’t have to. The way she frowns says it all, and when she leaves the room Sanghyuk sags back down on the bed and runs a hand through his hair, wincing at how sensitive his scalp is. Taekwoon sits heavily next to him, and automatically they lean into each other and sigh in sync. They were so close… So, so close. Jaehwan has slipped through their fingers yet again.

He turns his face to look at Taekwoon, and can see his lips turned down at the corners. “Taekwoon… you can’t listen to her. We have to stop him.”

When Taekwoon looks down at him, Sanghyuk is surprised to see a fire burning in his eyes, and when he smiles Sanghyuk grins back, slowly. He had fully expected Taekwoon to go along with the Council’s orders, but it seems he underestimated him. “I have no intention of listening to her,” he whispers in return. “We’ll leave tonight. I’ll come and fetch you.”

Sanghyuk doesn’t give a shit that they’re in the middle of the Temple’s medical bay and someone could walk in at any moment. He flings his arms around Taekwoon and kisses him, pressing close to him, winding his fingers in Taekwoon’s hair because he just cannot get enough—and if they’re going to die tonight, he’s going to live as much as he can until then. He doesn’t relent, not until Taekwoon relaxes and kisses him back, and when their tongues touch Sanghyuk shudders and resists the urge to pin Taekwoon down and fuck him right there, recently-healed skull fracture and all.

//

Hongbin is treating Sanghyuk like he has broken every single bone in his body, rather than just one in his head. He leads Sanghyuk up the ramp of the ship like he’s an old man, and walks him all the way to his favourite seat in the cockpit, settling him there and then hovering over him. They don’t have long to escape—a window of opportunity made by T7 creating a diversion by means of setting off the fire alarms in the Youngling’s wing—so he can’t wring his hands for long, but the whole time they’re taking off Sanghyuk catches Hongbin stealing sideways glances at him, a look of guilt etched into his face.

 _“Vanguard_ , this is Tython approach—” the radio begins, but Sanghyuk leans forward and presses the mute button before they can get any farther.

“You know, this is not my first time breaking the Council’s rules and going offworld when I shouldn’t, but it’s not any less fun the first time around,” he says, leaning back and kicking his feet up on the console, just the way Taekwoon hates it.

Taekwoon rolls his eyes, and with a flick of his fingers, moves Sanghyuk’s feet sideways off the console—but he’s using more care than he usually would. “I don’t plan on getting used to it.”

“Yeah? We’re rogues now. One step away from Wonshik,” Sanghyuk replies, looking over at Hongbin and sticking out his tongue, hoping for a laugh. Instead all he gets is a weak smile, and that snaps his tenuous patience. “Okay. Both of you need to stop it. I’m _fine_. That’s what bacta is for! I’m not going to break.”

The expression on Taekwoon’s face says _we’ll talk about this later_ , but Sanghyuk can’t be bothered dealing with that right now, especially since he’s not being entirely forthcoming. While he doesn’t feel injured, and his head certainly isn’t hurting anymore, he doesn’t feel right. Perhaps it’s the Force whispering warnings to him, or maybe just his body protesting, but he has to lean wearily on the wall as he gets up and walks down the hallway to his room, before sitting heavily on the bed. He doesn’t think he’s going to break, per se, but there’s something… off. About him, about Taekwoon, about Hongbin—hell, even when he reaches out to touch the Force, he can feel it’s messy, snarly, tumultuous. Just the opposite of the comforting effect he was hoping for, then.

Maybe it’s Jaehwan; maybe it’s because he’d seen him up close, had seen his power for himself. But that doesn’t quite fit either. It almost feels like the Force is trying to tell him something, like he’s on the brink of another vision, but he doesn’t know what and he certainly doesn’t know how to bring it on. Instead, he gathers one of the blankets from his bed and wraps it around himself, traipsing back to the bridge. “So… where are we going?”

“It’s just a theory,” Taekwoon shoots back over his shoulder as he slams the hyperspace lever down, sending them forward with a jolt. “Jaehwan didn’t tell me anything. But… I think he’ll be on Hoth.”

Sanghyuk rolls his eyes, making Hongbin smile. “Oh, fabulous. Another ice planet, because that worked so well last time.” He means it as a joke, but Taekwoon winces. “I’ll be on the lower deck, trying to find every last bit of warmth I can.”

He isn’t followed as he makes his way down to his favourite little bolthole in the lower deck, a tiny space that he can just fit into, right next to the engines. When they’re in hyperspace, like now, the engines sit just above idle, putting out a nice amount of heat and a soothing thrumming sound, not unlike a heartbeat. Even this space can’t make him feel better, though; he can’t fight the weirdness that envelopes him, not even when he drifts backwards into sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

**_3649 BBY_ **   
**_4 years since the Treaty of Coruscant_ **

It’s not often that Taekwoon is summoned to the Council chambers, and it’s most certainly not often that he’s summoned alone. Most of the time, aside from mission assignments, it’s for admonishments delivered to him and Jaehwan both for Jaehwan’s reckless behaviour. It’s happened so much over the years that now whenever he’s told the Council wants him he automatically winces and prepares for another telling-off. But when he arrives in the chambers, it’s just Satele there, sitting at the head of the Council table—and Jaehwan is nowhere to be seen.

“Grand Master, you asked to see me?” he murmurs, bowing low. He’s still not used to his Padawan braid being absent; he fully expects to see it swing down past his ear.

Satele looks up at him and smiles, and Taekwoon finds himself smiling back. Satele is the one responsible for them being on Tython—she had rediscovered it just after the Treaty was signed, which elevated her to the rank of Master and, shortly after, Grand Master, filling the spot left two years earlier by the previous Grand Master. Taekwoon likes her, even though he hasn’t had much to do with her personally in the past two years since she has become Grand Master. He gets the distinct feeling that she’s been paying very close attention to them, though.

“Yes, Taekwoon, I did. Come and take a seat.” She looks up from her datapad and gestures to the seat next to him with a small smile. “I have something very important I’d like to discuss with you. As you know, after the War our numbers have been… reduced, significantly. We’re looking to capable members of the Order to assist us in managing things, and that includes you.”

Taekwoon shifts, surprised. Of all the things, he certainly hadn’t expected this. It’s not recognition for all the years they spent without Masters, all the dirty work they did—mainly missions no one else wanted to do—but it’s a start. He’s never been as bitter as Jaehwan about their situation, anyway. “Of course, Grand Master. Anything I can do to help.”

“We’d like to assign you a Padawan, if you’re up for it.”

Oh. Well. He certainly hadn’t expected _that_. He’s only been a Knight for three months. It seems way too early to give him a Padawan—he wouldn’t even know where to _begin_ teaching a thirteen-year-old. Normally he would just suck it up, but this seems too big a thing to let lie. “With respect, Grand Master, I’m not sure I’m ready for that honour. I… wouldn’t know what to do.”

“I think you are,” Satele replies softly, leaning her chin on her hand and looking at him candidly. “The Council dropped the ball with you and Jaehwan, but one side effect of that is that you two have become extremely self-sufficient. Since sixteen, you have essentially been a Knight, just without the title. I have no doubt that you would be able to handle a Padawan.”

Taekwoon blushes under that gaze. He isn’t really used to such praise, not since the Treaty, not since a lot of the good in his life went away. Jaehwan used to gripe about things, but at least on Coruscant they had their Masters, and they had their Temple, and the Order was alive and well and healthy, even in the midst of a war. It’s nice to be recognised for once, and he smiles hesitantly. “Thank you, Grand Master. I’m still not sure I’d be any good at it, though.”

“Nonsense!” Satele sits back in her chair and picks up her datapad to read aloud from it. “The Padawan I have in mind is called Lee Hongbin. He’s very bright, very talented. He reminds me of Jaehwan, in a way, actually. He is only seventeen—three years younger than you. His Master was killed a few months ago, but we didn’t have anyone to assign him to until now.” She puts the datapad back on the table and tilts her head to the side. “I think you would temper his impatience with moderation. You’ve done well with Jaehwan, so far.”

Has he really, though? The flashes of darkness that Taekwoon first noticed all those years ago on Coruscant are still there, and Jaehwan’s temper hasn’t mellowed out since. If anything, it’s gotten worse, and Taekwoon is too helpless to do anything about it. The fights have settled since they were both Knighted, but there’s still something that’s always simmering just underneath Jaehwan’s surface, some emotion that Taekwoon can’t read, doesn’t know if he wants to. Instead of voicing these concerns, though, because all he has is hearsay (somehow he doesn’t think ‘my best friend isn’t acting right and hasn’t been for some time maybe ever and I don’t know how to deal with the darkness in him’ will go down well), he just smiles at Satele, hesitantly. “What about Jaehwan? Will he be getting a Padawan, too?”

“Ah,” Satele says, and she frowns a little. “Not… at present. The Council is… concerned about his ability to set an example in that way. We have other plans for him.”

He sags in his seat. In one breath she has given him a great gift, but along with it comes a curse—Jaehwan will never forgive him for this, he knows. He will take it as a personal slight that Taekwoon gets a Padawan and he doesn’t, even though Padawans aren’t bargaining chips and in the long run he’s probably better off not having one for the time being. But Taekwoon knows he won’t see it that way. All he’ll see is Taekwoon being singled out by the Council, yet again, and being given preferential treatment. But still, what choice does he have? He can’t refuse such an opportunity, not when it’s coming from Satele herself… And in any case, he’s not sure he _wants_ to refuse it, even if it’s incredibly selfish of him. So when he looks up and looks her in the eyes, it’s only with the tiniest bit of guilt that he says, “In that case, I would be honoured to accept.”

Satele nods, pleased. “Excellent! I’ll organise that when you get back from your next mission. Jaehwan will be going with you. You’re both off to Hoth. I’ll just get him sent in.”

Taekwoon slumps further down in his seat as Jaehwan enters, looking between him and Satele with a definite displeased air. He isn’t stupid, and knows what this means. Taekwoon can barely listen to the details of the mission, he’s too lost in his own head with worry. By the time she’s finished and he and Jaehwan leave the Council chambers together, all he knows is they’re going to Hoth to rescue the crew of a downed Republic ship—and even that is hard to remember, since he has to resist the urge to bite his nails as they make their way towards the hangar. No doubt Jaehwan can pick up on his nervousness, but he’s not saying anything, which makes Taekwoon _more_ nervous… It’s a vicious cycle.

//

“Oh, that’s weird.”

Taekwoon slides back into the right hand pilot’s seat of the transport ship Satele had instructed they take and looks down at the console to see what Jaehwan is referring to. “What’s weird?”

“Out there,” Jaehwan corrects, pointing out the windshield at a large object that’s quickly getting closer. It looks like a space station, although Taekwoon squints at it, unsure as to why all its lights are off. “What _is_ that?”

Hoth looms in the distance behind the object, and this close Taekwoon can see that it is indeed a space station—but a quiet chill runs through him. It’s not a space station of Republic design. “I didn’t know the Empire had a presence on this world,” he mutters, taking the controls and steering them to the left of it. “I thought there wasn’t any government.”

“No, look, it’s dead.” Jaehwan peers out the window at it. “Abandoned after the War, probably. I know a lot of starships were downed here. Maybe that has something to do with it?”

Taekwoon resists a shudder. “Maybe. It’s _creepy_. Let’s just get down to the surface and do our job, yes? I want to spend as little time here as possible.”

“Yeah, ice planets give me the creeps too,” Jaehwan replies quietly, adjusting the ship’s computers for their landing trajectory.

It helps, a bit, to know that Jaehwan has the same reaction to seeing snow as he does—it makes his stomach turn, because it just reminds him of Ilum, a planet he never wants to set foot on again as long as he lives. This isn’t Ilum—in fact, it doesn’t even look like Ilum as they come through the atmosphere—but he still can’t stop his fingers from clenching on the yoke. Jaehwan notices his discomfort, because he reaches out to pat Taekwoon’s shoulder briefly.

“Oh, shit,” Taekwoon sighs as they break through the clouds. Landing on a planet like this is hard, because it’s difficult to tell the difference between the white sky and the white ground, but that’s what computers are for. “Our timing was wrong. The sun’s about to set.”

Hoth is dangerous enough to be out in during the day, but after dark it gets absolutely lethal—in fact, it’s the Jedi policy to stay inside during Hoth’s nighttime, or limit the exposure to less than an hour. Considering they’ve been sent here on a rescue mission, the fact that they misjudged the timing doesn’t bode well for the crew of the downed ship they’ve been sent to rescue.

Jaehwan shrugs as he peers out the windshield, glancing down at his computer to make sure they’re on track for their landing. “It’s no big deal. Satele told us they’ve been here for two nights already. One more night won’t kill ‘em.”

Inwardly, Taekwoon wants to disagree, to point out that one more night could very well kill them—but he’s walking on eggshells around Jaehwan since he’d seen Taekwoon sitting next to Satele, so he swallows any complaints he might have and steers them down for a gentle landing. If the sensors are right, the crashed ship is just under a kilometer away, off to their right, which is close enough; he doesn’t want to land any further away because they have to walk to get there. He reaches above his head to switch off the engine, busying himself with postflight checks so he doesn’t have to face Jaehwan’s scrutiny.

It doesn’t take long, however, for Jaehwan’s patience to snap. In fact, it happens when Taekwoon is reaching into a compartment in the transport bay, looking for a couple of sleeping bags that he knows should be there. “So… What were you and Satele talking about?”

Taekwoon jumps so hard he smacks his head on the lip of the compartment and backs out, wincing and rubbing his head. “Nothing. She just wanted to talk about some stuff. Nothing important.”

“You’re lying,” Jaehwan retorts, his eyes narrowing. “Come on, I’m not stupid. You’re a terrible liar. What did she say?”

“It really was nothing,” Taekwoon mutters, gathering the sleeping bags in his arms and clutching them to his chest like a shield. He really _is_ a terrible liar, but he also really does not want to tell Jaehwan the truth. It will just end up in a fight.

Through the Force, he can feel Jaehwan’s irritation growing, and when he finally gets the courage to look his friend in the face he drops the sleeping bags in shock. Jaehwan looks _livid_. He is angrier than Taekwoon has ever seen him before. “Do _not_ lie to me,” he threatens, taking a step closer and jabbing Taekwoon in the chest. “Tell me what she said.”

A flash of irritation rises in Taekwoon to match Jaehwan’s so he raises his chin slightly and narrows his eyes. “She told me she wants to assign me a Padawan. It’s happening as soon as we get back to Tython.”

With an almighty roar, Jaehwan wraps his hand around Taekwoon’s throat and swings him around to slam him into the side of the ship. Taekwoon shoves him away with the Force, sending him tumbling head-over-heels to the other side of the transport bay, his hands shaking with the shock. When Jaehwan turns, he’s panting and sweaty like he’s just run a marathon—but worst of all is the hideous feeling Taekwoon feels radiating off him. It’s darkness, and anger, and bitterness, all mixed up together, and it makes his stomach turn. This is worse than he’s ever felt before. He doesn’t know what to do. “Hyung,” he pleads, extending a hand to his friend. “It’s not a big deal, I promise. You’ll get your own Padawan soon. You know that no-one can match you with your Force abilities. It’s just about being patient.”

With a roar, Jaehwan explodes. That’s the only way to describe it, really. The dark feelings surrounding him turn into a wave, pinning Taekwoon against the side of the ship, helpless to move. He can’t do anything but watch as Jaehwan doubles over, and when he looks up at Taekwoon, his eyes are the hideous yellow-orange of a Sith, and Taekwoon’s heart stops in his chest. “Do you know how long I’ve been patient for?” he roars, clambering to his feet and taking a step closer to Taekwoon. “Do you know how hard it’s been for me to watch you become the Council’s favourite? It was always Taekwoon, wasn’t it? It was always _you_. It will always be _you_.”

“Not—true—” Taekwoon chokes out, his right hand inching down towards his lightsaber. He’s absolutely petrified. The dark side is wreathing Jaehwan like a beacon. He never knew things were this bad. This Jaehwan is not the same Jaehwan he grew up with; he cannot be.

Jaehwan clenches his fist and sends Taekwoon sailing over to the other side of the ship, slamming him into the wall so hard his head spins and he sees stars. “They’re just too afraid to see what I could become,” Jaehwan snarls, so full of vitriol it’s washing over Taekwoon in waves. “They don’t know what I’m capable of!”

“You’ve gone mad,” Taekwoon replies, unable to believe his eyes. He can’t do anything but watch as his best friend falls to the dark side. “This isn’t you! I held you in my arms while we saw half the Council die. Do you remember? Do you remember all those tears you shed? That Jaehwan wouldn’t say these things.”

Taekwoon sees the moment Jaehwan goes dead inside. It’s a frightening thing. The yellow fades from his eyes, but the dark side is still wreathing him, still choking him. His face goes from enraged to a horrible coldness that Taekwoon doesn’t even recognise. “You don’t know me,” he replies, before clenching his fist and sending Taekwoon into the wall of the ship once more.

 

**_3644 BBY_ **   
**_9 years since the Treaty of Coruscant_ **

Somehow, Sanghyuk knows this is the end.

He doesn’t know what it is, whether it’s the same feeling in his gut that he used to get back on Tatooine when a big storm was coming, or even the Force—or maybe they’re the same thing. But something in him is whispering that this is the end of their journey. Whatever happens today, on Hoth, will resonate with them for the rest of their lives, he knows that. Perhaps that’s why the bridge is completely silent as Hongbin brings them down to Hoth, not even asking Taekwoon any questions, just busying himself with the computers.

They find Jaehwan’s ship on the scanners quite easily, just as Taekwoon had said. It’s parked less than a kilometer away from some wreckage of another ship—probably fallout from the War. Hoth is apparently notorious for being littered with downed ships; some other time Sanghyuk would be fascinated by them, but right now he’s too busy trying not to pace with nervousness. He doesn’t even have a helmet on, since Jaehwan obliterated the last one and they’d left in such a hurry he didn’t have a chance to grab one—meaning he’s going into battle without an indicator of his shields, without his targeting matrix (not that he needs that anyway). He feels almost naked, without it, and not just because it means Jaehwan will be able to gaze upon his face properly.

But Taekwoon looks puzzled as they land on the ice some way away from Jaehwan’s ship, and when Sanghyuk touches him on the arm gently he flinches away. “Jaehwan’s not here,” he murmurs, and Hongbin looks up, surprised.

“I know Hakyeon is,” Hongbin says, and then adds gloomily, “I can feel his craziness from here.”

Sanghyuk glances back and forth between them, unsure. Taekwoon looks pale, but Hongbin looks focused, ready. “Where could he be?”

“I have a suspicion,” Taekwoon replies, turning and jerking his head to indicate the others to follow. They do, scrambling after him, glancing at each other. “But I fear this may be a trap.”

They follow his lead and suit up regardless. Sanghyuk wishes he had a beanie or a balaclava or _something_ , because even though he’s wearing one more cloak than last time he absolutely cannot believe the cold when the ramp slides open and they make their way out onto the snow. Hongbin hadn’t been lying—Hoth is much, much worse than Ilum. He can barely focus on what’s in front of him, which is Hakyeon, standing ready with lightsaber drawn. He certainly can’t be bothered to feel concern.

There’s no words between anyone as the two Jedi move forward to engage him. Together they make quite the pair; Sanghyuk has never seen them fighting together like this, but they’re completely in sync with each other—Hongbin neatly ducks when Taekwoon twirls and slashes at where Hakyeon is, and then rolls away to leap over Taekwoon’s other lightsaber. Where Hongbin uses the Force to push Hakyeon around, Taekwoon is always waiting to swipe at him with a lightsaber; where Taekwoon causes him to back away, Hongbin is always waiting to drive him forward again. If Sanghyuk could feel, he’d be in awe, but the cold has stripped any emotions from him.

For all its gracefulness, the lightsaber battle certainly isn’t easy. Hakyeon manages to keep up against three lightsabers, and even manages to mount an offence, too; he’s moving too fast for Sanghyuk to even see, at some points. He can only catch glimpses: the yellow of his eyes; the way Hongbin’s teeth are gritted; how white Taekwoon’s knuckles are, wrapped around the hilts of his lightsabers. He raises his blaster at one point, when Hakyeon’s back is to him, but then Hakyeon whirls around and makes a gesture with his hand and Sanghyuk is being choked—just like on Nar Shaddaa. It’s just as awful now as it was then, and the horrible feeling of having the life squeezed out of him makes him fall to his knees, gasping for air. He raises his blaster, and is just about to squeeze the trigger, when Hongbin and Taekwoon blast Hakyeon away with the Force as one, their faces grim and sincere.

“Where is your master?” Taekwoon grunts, parrying a strike.

They’re face-to-face, so when Hakyeon grins widely Taekwoon flinches back automatically. “Why are you asking me that? You know the answer.”

Sanghyuk can’t quite believe his eyes as Taekwoon crouches and flips neatly backwards, landing on two feet right in front of him, hooking a hand under Sanghyuk’s elbow and yanking him to his feet. There’s a moment where _something_ passes between Taekwoon and Hakyeon—some understanding that’s completely beyond Sanghyuk’s comprehension—before Hongbin slashes at Hakyeon’s back and he howls with pain, whirling to block another strike.

“What are you doing?” Sanghyuk asks, somewhat panicked, as Taekwoon drags him back towards the ship. He can’t stop looking back over his shoulder at Hakyeon and Hongbin going at it furiously, their pace untempered by Taekwoon’s more graceful fighting style. “We can’t just leave them!”

Taekwoon’s face is determined as they make their way back up the ramp, even as Sanghyuk is struggling to get away. “I know where Jaehwan is. Our fight is not here.”

“But Hongbin!” he blurts, rushing to a console the moment they’re inside to bring up one of the external cameras so he can watch the fight. “I don’t understand. We have to stay.”

Taekwoon’s gone, though, making his way towards the bridge before Sanghyuk can even comment. He follows in the Jedi’s wake somewhat miserably, completely torn. On one hand, he knows that they need to find Jaehwan and end this, once and for all. On the other hand, he’s seen what Hakyeon’s like up close, and leaving Hongbin to fend for himself against him seems like the wrong move. But Taekwoon smiles at him the moment he steps onto the bridge—a smile that seems so very out of place, considering what they’re leaving behind, and what they’re about to do—and he feels slightly reassured. “I know you’re worried about Hongbin, but don’t be.” Taekwoon winks at him. “After all… he was trained by me.”

“I thought Jedi aren’t meant to be arrogant,” Sanghyuk replies weakly, sitting down in the copilot’s chair and clenching his fists, trying to get feeling back into his fingers.

“It’s not arrogant if it’s the truth,” Taekwoon replies flippantly.

The engines rumble underneath them as they lift off, and automatically Sanghyuk turns to the console and starts assisting Taekwoon with the takeoff, even as his heart is heavy. This is all happening so fast, and while he hadn’t exactly expected them to all sit down and have a discussion about it all, he can’t help feeling that they’re rushing headlong into something they’re not exactly prepared for. Not to mention that he knows Taekwoon well enough to know that this offhand attitude about the whole thing is just a cover for how he’s really feeling—which, if the Force is anything to go by, is extremely nervous.

“Where the hell are we going?” he mutters, his hands hovering over the keyboard as the ship’s computer asks for their destination.

Taekwoon closes his eyes briefly, as if steeling himself, and then sits up straight and steers them up into the sky. “It’s an abandoned space station. Don’t bother with the coordinates. I know where it is.”

Sanghyuk wishes he knew the full story, but now is not the time, so he just slumps back in the chair and reaches for Taekwoon’s hand, lacing their fingers together as they watch as the orange glow begins to heat up the windshield. They need to do this, he knows, but that doesn’t make it any easier.


	7. Chapter 7

**_3649 BBY_ **   
**_4 years since the Treaty of Coruscant_ **

The moment Taekwoon blacks out, Jaehwan drops to his knees, the dark side of the Force leaving him as abruptly as it joined him. He gasps for air, clutching his chest, staring at Taekwoon’s limp body and shuddering helplessly as he cries. He hadn’t meant to hurt Taekwoon like that. He hadn’t meant to get that angry, even. All he knew is the darkness simmering underneath his skin for god-knows-how-long suddenly exploded, and it was like he was more powerful than he’d ever been before, more vengeful, more _righteous_.

He manages to get to his feet and, sobbing, wrenches open the door to the outside, not caring about the cold. How can he care, when he feels like his heart is breaking in two, and he doesn’t even know why? Logically he knows that Taekwoon didn’t ask for any of this—he didn’t ask for the praise, for the attention—but emotionally it stings harder than he thought it would. Always going through life as second best is an awful feeling, and Jaehwan’s been doing it for twenty years.

He doesn’t even realise where he is until he startles out of his own head to stare at the piece of twisted metal on the ground. Wiping his face—and then realising that his tears froze long ago—he blinks at it like it will transform into something else. In fact, the path ahead is littered with wreckage, horrid twisted bits of metal that are embedded in the ice. It’s only when he comes over a rise to see the full extent of it that he realises he’s walked so far in a daze to come upon the gnarled, torn wreckage of the ship they landed near—the ship whose occupants they’re tasked with rescuing. He sees them, huddled in a piece of the ship that’s remained mainly intact, crouched around a fire.

Then he notices the woman.

He only has a second to draw his lightsaber to block her lightning, nearly stumbling and falling backwards with the force of it. All he can see is her blood-red lightsaber, glowing in the night, reflecting the swirling snowflakes that are whirling around them. Her eyes, glowing yellow in him at the darkness, crease up like she’s smiling—and then she’s on him, striking hard and fast, forcing him back before he can even process what’s happening. Why the hell would a Sith be here, on Hoth? Is this crew really _that_ vital to the Republic?

“I didn’t think they’d be so bold to send a Jedi,” she purrs, and when she takes a step back Jaehwan can see that she’s only a bit older than him, with red curly hair tumbling down her back, wearing robes of black and red. “And look at you. Only just a Jedi, at that.”

The awful anger rises in Jaehwan again, and this time when their lightsabers clash he takes the offensive, using the Force to push her back several steps before whirling to parry her strike. She’s taken aback by that, he can tell—surprise is all too easy to read on her features. He knows that Taekwoon should be here too, knows that she is probably stronger than he is at dueling… but Taekwoon is lying unconscious by Jaehwan’s own hand, so he has to deal with this himself.

“Your anger,” she gasps, flipping backwards a few feet away, her eyes wide.

Jaehwan grits his teeth and reaches with the Force for a nearby boulder, lifting it up and flinging it at her. She slices through it easily, and laughs, the sound echoing around the crash site. “Shut up,” he growls, his irritation rising, although he’s not sure _why_. Everything makes him so angry, these days.

“What have they done to you?” she asks in wonder, dodging Jaehwan’s next strike expertly. “I sense a great darkness in you. You could be an excellent Sith.”

“I—will—not—fall,” Jaehwan roars, attacking her furiously, his green lightsaber mixing with the red of hers to make her face light in an eerie glow. He hates her, he _hates_ her, he hates her because he could be her, and that’s terribly frightening.

She smirks. “What is it, hm? The Jedi are coddling you, are they? Holding you back? I can sense you have walked with the dark side of the Force for a long time. Did they sense it too?”

With a growl, he gets into her personal space and, before she can stab him, wraps his fingers around her throat and slams her down into the ground. But then her face is no longer hers, it’s Taekwoon’s and he’s gasping for air, and Jaehwan releases her and scrambles backwards so fast he falls down, his feelings tearing him apart from the inside out. What has he _done?_ What has he _become?_ The dark side is waiting in the wings, just like it always is, just like it always has been—even though he’s never told anyone so—but he shoves it away desperately.

“I am a Jedi,” he tells her, but his voice is wobbly and he doesn’t sound so sure anymore. “I will always be a Jedi.”

She shakes her head and twirls her lightsaber idly. “No. Jedi don’t feel the things you do… Or at least, _good_ Jedi don’t.” Jaehwan’s hurt instantly turns into rage, and he flips up onto his feet, but she continues. “Good Jedi don’t attack using their emotions. Good Jedi don’t have to remind everyone that they’re Jedi. You’ve already fallen,” she sneers, and leaps in for the attack.

This time, when the rage comes, he welcomes it, _revels_ in it. It’s white-hot, this anger, and it feels so fucking _right_. No longer will he be denied what he deserves. No longer will he be overlooked. No longer will he be second-best, always bowing and scraping to the Jedi’s wishes, a loyal slave until the end.

Now he is free.

It’s so easy to reach out with the dark side of the Force and use it to choke the Sith, stopping her in midair—easier than it’s ever been before. Now the Force is a weapon, a tool, and he can use it however he desires. Everything will bend to him. This Sith will be first, and already she’s gasping for air and finding none, the colour bleeding from her face. She dies within minutes, and he doesn’t even feel triumph. He feels empty.

He scoops her lightsaber off the ground and weighs it in his hand. It sounds different than his one, probably due to the crystal: from what he’s read, Sith use artificially constructed crystals in their lightsabers, as red crystals aren’t formed naturally. This lightsaber thrums with an energy that’s familiar and alien all at once, but it feels right in his hand, just as right as his other one does… Maybe even moreso.

When he turns, the crew of the Republic ship are huddling together, terrified. He can feel their fear. It’s rushing through the Force in waves, and when he breathes in and closes his eyes he swears he can taste it. There’s only six of them, three humans and three Twi’leks, and they’re unarmed. There’s no contest in this sport, but they are witnesses, and the dark side is baying for their blood. It feels familiar, somehow, like he’s finally reached out to embrace an old friend.

Their slaughter comes easily, and they die as the first beings to see Jaehwan reborn as what he was always meant to be. When their blood splatters the snow, he looks up into the stars and feels really, truly alive, for the first time in years.

//

It’s hard to follow Jaehwan’s tracks, because by the time Taekwoon wakes up and staggers outside holding his head it’s begun to snow, the fine flakes dusting everything. He’d managed to grab a cloak on his way out, but it’s not done much—he’s shivering so hard his teeth are chattering madly, making his head ache even more than it already does. He’s still in shock over what happened on the ship; he can’t even remember if Jaehwan’s eyes really did turn yellow or if it was his overactive imagination. Surely his best friend wouldn’t turn to the dark side? Surely he couldn’t? After all they’ve been through together, wouldn’t he be able to see that coming?

The moment he clambers over a rise to peer down upon the crash site, though, his heart stops in his chest. Jaehwan’s there, but he has a red saber in his off hand, an unfamiliar one. There’s a dead Sith woman on the ground behind him, but worst of all—worst of all is the evidence of his evil, the bodies of the innocent Republic crew scattered at his feet. Taekwoon is almost too afraid to reach for the Force, too afraid of what he’ll find, but sure enough: the dark side is wreathing Jaehwan again, only this time it seems more… permanent.

He doesn’t even realise he’s made a noise until Jaehwan turns and smiles at him, and it’s like his heart is being torn from his chest, it hurts that much. The yellow eyes are back, but the rest of him is still so _Jaehwan_ that he can’t, won’t, believe it. No. _No_.

“Yes,” Jaehwan hisses, the answer to the unspoken question between them. “This is the last time I’m ever held back by you. You are _nothing.”_

Taekwoon draws his lightsabers, hating himself for doing so. Never in his life did he think he was about to fight his best friend, his brother; if Jaehwan really has fallen, then he knows it’s his duty to kill him, but he also knows that he simply cannot do it. He will not. Even the thought of it hurts too much.

But Jaehwan doesn’t stand and fight. Instead he flips over Taekwoon’s head and sprints away, back towards the ship. For a moment Taekwoon considers lying there, letting the snow cover him, letting his failure be erased—but then he’s up and running after Jaehwan, choking back tears and wishing he was dead instead of where he is. He dodges a rock that Jaehwan hurls at him, pushes weakly back, but it has no effect—not when he’s this choked up with emotions, not when Jaehwan is this strong.

Jaehwan reaches the ship just before he does, and slams the door shut in his face. Taekwoon bangs on it helplessly, and then stabs one of his lightsabers through the metal hull, but the engines are already spooling up—and before he can cut a hole, Jaehwan hits the throttles and he’s blasted away entirely, somehow managing to cling onto both his lightsabers as he goes tumbling head over heels into the snow. He lands on his back, panting, looking up into the night sky and watching as his only transport goes flying away.

He is all alone on this planet, and when that finally dawns on him he rolls into a ball and bursts into tears.

//

By some miracle, the fire that the Republic crew lit hasn’t gone out, so Taekwoon spends the night sleeping fitfully as close to it as he dares. He doesn’t really sleep, though, mainly lies on his back and stares at the stars and wonders where the hell they went so wrong—and what he could have done to prevent this. By the time dawn comes, his fingers are starting to go numb and red, which he knows is the first sign of frostbite. He has to get off this planet or he will die here, and as much as he just wants everything to just _stop_ he has a duty to do, first.

He comes upon the escape pod not very far from the fire—and miraculously, it’s intact. Mostly. He sets about breaking in and rewiring it to get the computers to turn on, trying to ignore the way his head is starting to swim, he’s that cold. Even though he’s all alone, with nothing but the snow and the wind and the ice to keep him company, it’s actually sort of soothing. Working on machinery is easy, but dealing with his feelings about Jaehwan is hard. He focuses on the fact that he’s grateful enough to find an intact escape pod, one that hasn’t been jettisoned, either—it looks like it was flung free in the crash, rather than actually used which is great for him, since the more fuel it has to get off this frozen rock, the better.

By midday the computers are online, and within an hour of that he slams the door behind him and punches the button on the computer to send him rocketing towards the sky. He’s strapped into a crude seat, pointing into space, watching the tiny porthole window heat up and praying to god that the pod hasn’t been structurally damaged in the crash. If it is… well. There’s settlements on Hoth, but it’s getting to them that’s the problem. He just has to close his eyes, let go, and trust in the Force. It’s carried him this far, and it’s all he _can_ do. If he dies, so be it.

When he next opens his eyes, all he can see out the window is the distant glow of far-off stars, and general debris in the little cabin is floating. When he undoes his seatbelt, he starts floating too, the little escape pod lacking a gravity generator. It’s an odd feeling, but for the first time since they landed he feels at peace, floating there like that, pressed up against the window like the stars can give him the answers. Whatever happens will happen as the Force wills it. He must find Jaehwan, he knows, because it’s his duty. There’s no room for emotions in the Jedi code, so he quashes his anguish and closes his eyes, reaching out with the Force. He’s been sensing Jaehwan for as long as he can remember, so it only takes him a few moments to find him—he’s several klicks away to the east. The anger in him has not subsided, but Taekwoon ignores that and instead pushes the throttles in, steering the escape pod towards wherever Jaehwan is.

He knows before he sees it that Jaehwan will be on the abandoned Imperial space station, although he has no idea why. Refuge? Is he waiting for Taekwoon to find him? Has he contacted the Sith? Taekwoon has so many questions and so few answers, and the Force is refusing to speak to him, to give him insight. Not that he was ever blessed with visions. That was always Jaehwan’s curse.

Somehow, he manages to dock the escape pod with extreme difficulty—he never was the best pilot, and this craft was designed to crash safely, not to reattach to a space station. But he manages it by some small miracle, and the moment the airlock opens he forgets that he’s in zero gravity and is dumped on the floor unceremoniously as the space station’s gravity generators reach the pod. He doesn’t even hesitate when he gets up, flinging off the heavy winter coat and stepping into the hallway, because a Jedi does not hesitate. There is no emotion, there is peace. The Code is all he knows, all he needs. He can do this.

Jaehwan is kneeling on the floor in a large room at the front of the space station, with huge windows giving a gorgeous view of Hoth in all its glory. He’s rocking back and forth, muttering to himself, and it’s only when Taekwoon gets close enough to hear that the words resonate through him and he can’t breathe.

“Peace is a lie there is only passion through passion I gain strength through strength I gain power through power I gain victory through victory my chains are broken the Force shall free me peace is a lie there is only passion through passion…”

Over and over, the words swim around in Taekwoon’s head, and the quiet self-assuredness he had in the escape pod, the trust in the Force, dissolves as he crumples, bending at the waist, torn. It’s a Code, but it’s not the Jedi Code: this is the Sith Code, the Code of their enemies, the Code of the thing that Taekwoon has worked his whole life to destroy.

Jaehwan is dead. This man is not Jaehwan.

“...I gain victory through victory my chains are broken the Force shall free me.” Jaehwan raises his head slowly to stare at Taekwoon. “I should have known you’d have found a way to get off that rock. You’re nothing if not persistent.”

“Don’t do this,” Taekwoon pleads. His voice is hoarse, like his spirit is leaving him. He can’t do this. “Jaehwan, please don’t do this.”

“It is done,” Jaehwan replies. Those eyes, those horrible yellow eyes. Taekwoon knows he’ll be seeing those in his nightmares for the rest of his life. “It’s over. Accept it. I have become what I was always meant to be.”

Taekwoon shakes his head, his eyes tearing up, refusing to believe. “No. No, no. We were meant to do this together. We stick together, no matter what. Remember?”

Jaehwan’s expression changes in a flash—from neutral to enraged, and Taekwoon mirrors him as he leaps to his feet, drawing his lightsabers. The red lightsaber in his off hand looks so wrong that he can barely stand to look at it. _This isn’t real._ “What _you_ were meant to do was become the Council’s favourite,” Jaehwan sneers, and Taekwoon can feel the hurt there, as gaping a wound as if Taekwoon had run him through with his lightsaber. “What _I_ was meant to do was watch you from the wings, always coming second, always being overlooked. There was never an _I_ when you were around.”

“I love you,” Taekwoon sobs, an apology, his voice cracking. He never meant for any of this to happen. He never saw it coming.

“Too late.” Jaehwan raises his lightsabers, shaking his head. “Years too late.”

The fight begins without another word. Taekwoon is sobbing so hard he can barely see, so it’s all he can do to put his trust in the Force, to quash his emotions as best he can and react on instinct. Jaehwan is fueled by the dark side, now—he’s more powerful than Taekwoon has ever seen him before, and with him wielding two lightsabers he holds up to Taekwoon’s attacks easily. It’s only until Jaehwan flips over him and Taekwoon sees purple sparks of lightning flashing between his fingers, like he can barely control it, that he realises he may be over his head.

When Jaehwan shoots the lightning at him, he rolls away, only to see another bolt coming a millisecond later. This one he blocks with one lightsaber, staggering back a few seconds at the force of it. He always knew Jaehwan was strong in the Force, of course, but this is on another level entirely—this is fueled by Jaehwan’s hatred, and that is so strong that he can barely believe it.

 _There is no emotion, there is peace._ That’s all Taekwoon focuses on as he dissociates completely. It’s very easy to fight if he pretends that this is just some random Sith, not his brother, and so that’s what he does. Every motion is on instinct, every swipe and slash and parry fuelled by the Force—he can feel it moving through him, moving through his blades, shaping him and showing him what to do, as it always has. With a bored disinterest he forces Jaehwan back, back, putting him on the defensive, taking the upper hand as easily as if Jaehwan has given it to him. The more peaceful he gets, the angrier Jaehwan becomes, but Taekwoon has trust in himself and trust in the Force, and that’s all he needs.

Until, of course, Jaehwan uses the Force to rip his lightsabers away and shoots lightning at him.

Taekwoon only has a second to react, to put his hands out and brace himself. Satele had taught him this trick, albeit in rudimentary form, a few years ago, and he’d never had the need to use it before now. Satele can stop lightsabers with her bare hands, but Taekwoon makes do with lightning instead—he stumbles when it hits him, but he feels the energy flowing through him and absorbs it instead, redirecting it. When he steps forward and pushes the energy back at Jaehwan—this time in the form of a Force push rather than lightning—he goes flying across the room to slam into the wall, where he crumples to the ground, his lightsabers spinning away in opposite directions.

Jaehwan makes some weak efforts to get up, but he only gets as far as his knees before Taekwoon places his lightsabers at his neck, freezing him in place. The cool detachment he had while fighting is hard to have here, though, when it’s unmistakably Jaehwan staring up at him, his eyes narrowed, his mouth ripped into a scowl. Where before Taekwoon was filled with the Force, now he feels empty, and in that void all the emotions he squashed came rushing back in waves, nearly staggering him.

“You’re weak,” Jaehwan spits, swaying a little. “Finish this.”

He needs to. He knows this. One movement and Jaehwan will be dead—no, a _Sith_ will be dead. But he cannot. He tries to, desperately, his knuckles turning white and his hands trembling, but every moment they spent together flashes in front of his eyes—all the times they comforted each other, every time they leaned on each other, all the times they spent sparring and training together, every time Jaehwan cried and Taekwoon wiped his tears away… He can’t do it. He won’t. He _can’t._

Without a word, Taekwoon lowers his lightsabers and holsters them. Jaehwan glares up at him, his breathing heavy, ragged, but doesn’t do anything as Taekwoon turns and walks away, holding out a hand for Jaehwan’s lightsaber as he goes, wincing when it flies into his palm. He hooks that on his belt, too, and makes his way back to the airlock, every step weighing heavy on his conscience.

The tears find him some time later, when he’s back aboard the ship they left Tython on, in the middle of hyperspace. They don’t stop no matter what he does, no matter where he goes. He feels empty, like a part of him has died. Maybe it has.

Even the Force cannot help him now.

 

**_3644 BBY_ **   
**_9 years since the Treaty of Coruscant_ **

Taekwoon’s been acting off the whole time—since that first alarm blared, really—but the closer they get to the space station, the more erratic he becomes. It’s not even what Sanghyuk would normally classify as erratic behaviour, but in Taekwoon, it’s patently obvious. He withdraws into himself totally. He stops talking to Sanghyuk, except to bark orders here and there. It’s almost like he’s becoming numb, and no matter what Sanghyuk does he cannot draw him out. He has no idea what happened here on this space station, what horrific piece of the past Jaehwan is dredging up this time, but the memories appear to be the worst so far.

The strangest thing, though, is that while one might expect Taekwoon to feel nervous or sad or anguished, when Sanghyuk feels through the Force he finds that Taekwoon is empty. That’s the only word he can use to describe it. He has no emotions in him at all. It’s frightening, but he doesn’t know what to do about it, so he just puts his head down and listens to the orders he’s given, not even having the heart to be snarky. There’s too much at stake—he can feel the dark side hovering at the corners of his vision, tainting everything slightly.

“Ready?” he murmurs to Taekwoon as he presses the button to open the airlock, taking a deep breath and trying to ignore the way his hands are shaking. “We can do this.”

Taekwoon smiles at him, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Before he can move, Taekwoon pulls him in for a hug, nuzzling his head in the crook of Sanghyuk’s neck, pressing a gentle kiss there. “I love you, nau’kara,” he sighs, the words imprinting themselves on Sanghyuk’s skin. He breathes them in, desperately. This feels like a goodbye. “More than you could know.”

“I love you more,” Sanghyuk replies, and kisses Taekwoon gently.

There’s nothing else to say as they turn and stare into the space station’s airlock together, but when he goes to grab Taekwoon’s hand he takes a quick step forward, pulling his hand free. Sanghyuk goes to follow, but Taekwoon turns, his expression puzzled. “I left something in the bridge, on my seat. Could you grab it for me?”

Raising an eyebrow, Sanghyuk turns and reluctantly makes his way back inside. “I really don’t think now’s the time to suddenly be forgetful.” He rolls his eyes to no one. “I mean, we are walking into the lair of all evil and that. Couldn’t you—”

It’s when he turns back and sees the expression on Taekwoon’s face that it hits him. He isn’t stupid, just naive, but Taekwoon is a terrible liar. He reads the intention there before Taekwoon can even move, and leaps for the door—but it slams shut in his face. He peers at the console next to the door, staring at the words blinking up at him, feeling slightly dizzy. _Master override,_ it reads. _Ship lockdown initiated._

“Taekwoon!” he screams, flattening himself on the door and banging on it with all his might, trying desperately not to panic. “Taekwoon, let me out!”

Silence.

“Taekwoon!” He lets the panic bleed through this time. He’s hyperventilating as he kicks at the door furiously, putting all his might behind the kick. Nothing happens, of course. It’s an airlock door, designed to hold back the void of space. But still he tries, working himself into a lather, kicking and hitting the door in such a fit that he’s sure he fractures something—but he’s too frantic to care. No, _no,_ no no no Taekwoon wouldn’t leave him here, he can’t, he couldn’t, he _wouldn’t_.

By the time he sinks to the ground, shaking, he feels as if he’s going completely mad. Taekwoon and Jaehwan are out there, facing off, alone. This isn’t the way it was meant to be. _It wasn’t meant to be like this!_ He should be there, standing alongside Taekwoon, but instead he’s locked in here, no good to anybody. With a roar he stands up and unholsters his blasters, squeezing the triggers over and over and over. That does nothing more than riddle the door with holes, but even when he shoulder-charges it it still does not open, still remains stubbornly locked.

He is trapped.


	8. Chapter 8

Taekwoon had sworn to himself he’d never come back here, not as long as he lived, and yet here he is, exactly where he was five years ago. Nothing at all has changed. The dusty hallways are still identical. When he enters the main room, he can still see the dent in the metal panels on the wall from where he threw Jaehwan. He can see the echo of them fighting like ghosts, dancing in front of his vision, and it doesn’t go away when he blinks.

He can still hear Sanghyuk screaming, but it’s faint now, like he’s given up hope. If Taekwoon was allowing himself to feel he would be in tears right now, because this is a betrayal of the highest order. He has no intention of letting Sanghyuk get hurt, or worse, killed—and Jaehwan is more than capable of striking Sanghyuk down, that much is patently clear. No, this is between Taekwoon and Jaehwan, and it’s about time he faced that fact. Sanghyuk will be safe on the ship, no matter what happens. Someone is going to die today, he knows that much, but he doesn’t know who. He doesn’t particularly care. This ends now, one way or another. He used to have hope that he could turn Jaehwan back to the light, that there was still good in him, but after following him around the galaxy for five years and seeing the havoc and destruction he has left in his wake… Well, he finds it hard to believe that nowadays.

Jaehwan is kneeling on the ground, just like last time, but at least he isn’t muttering. It had taken years for Taekwoon to stop hearing the Sith Code whenever he tried to get to sleep. Silently, he draws his lightsabers and ignites them, waiting, waiting, always waiting. He is empty so the Force can fill him, and when he takes a deep breath in he feels the Force around him, flowing through him, and he smiles a little bit. He can do this. He’s had five years to prepare. This time, he’ll do this.

“Do you think we were always destined to do this? Chase each other around?” Jaehwan muses as he looks up. The lightsaber in his hand is the same one Taekwoon had seen him with all those years ago, the fallen Sith’s one, and its red bathes his face in an otherworldly glow.

“Not anymore,” Taekwoon replies tiredly.

Jaehwan nods as he gets to his feet, twirling his lightsaber, little arcs of lightning jumping between his fingers. “You feel it too, I suppose. Everything is coming to an end. The Treaty will soon be obsolete, and the Jedi will be wiped from the face of the galaxy. No less than they deserve.”

“You were a Jedi, once,” Taekwoon reminds him. “You can’t forget your past that easily.”

Taking a slow step forward, Jaehwan narrows his eyes. “I don’t try to. I wish I would have realised a lot sooner than I did… But I don’t try and forget. How many years have _you_ spent in your own head, wondering what went wrong?”

Just because five years has passed doesn’t mean a thing—Jaehwan can still read Taekwoon as easily as ever, even when he’s as blank a state as possible. He’s certainly not wrong. Jaehwan’s fall has given him more sleepless nights than he would care to admit. But this goes both ways: Taekwoon knows that if Jaehwan is even a tiny bit the Jedi he used to be—the Jedi that was compassionate, and kind, and went out of his way to save lives—then being a Sith isn’t easy. “And how many times have _you_ thought of your parents, slaughtered by your own hand?” He feels anger spike in Jaehwan, knows he’s treading on thin ice, but doesn’t bother slowing down. They’ve come this far. “How many times has the guilt eaten away at you, which you know it shouldn't, because you are a _Sith?”_ Jaehwan is so fast when he strikes at Taekwoon, but he was expecting it and blocks it easily. “You might fool them, but you can’t fool me. I know there’s good in you, somewhere.”

“You’re wrong!” Jaehwan snarls, striking furiously at Taekwoon—but everywhere his lightsaber goes, Taekwoon is there to meet him with one of his own. “I am the future of the Sith!”

“If you say so,” Taekwoon deadpans, ducking underneath a stab and following up with a rebuke of his own.

Jaehwan still fights the same as he always did—quick, precise strikes, aggressive and demanding. When they trained together, they worked well as a team, because Jaehwan was nearly always on the offensive and Taekwoon on the defensive. So for the moment he just lets the Force flow through him, blocking Jaehwan’s strikes, dodging his Force pushes and occasional bouts of lightning. This isn’t as hard as the last time they dueled here, mainly because he’s had five years to get used to the idea of fighting Jaehwan like this, but he still hates every second of it.

//

Sanghyuk has emptied the gas canister on one of his blasters completely, but the door still remains stubbornly closed, refusing to give way no matter what he does. He thinks that he can faintly hear the awful sound of lightsabers clashing, the low hum of voices, but he isn’t really sure; perhaps it’s his mind playing tricks on him. The Force is as snarly and as torn up as ever, and he’s trying to stay away from it because Jaehwan’s presence is making his head swim.

By the time he finishes tearing Hongbin’s room apart from top to bottom, he’s exhausted and he still has half the ship to do. Surely there must be _something_ in here to help him get the door open—a crowbar, or even a spare scrap of metal. But the ship is immaculate, with no junk to be found, and there’s nothing in Taekwoon’s room to help, either. Nothing on his desk, nothing in the drawers, nothing on his bed. Sanghyuk feels like he’s about to burst into flames he’s so angry, and it’s only when he rips the mattress off Taekwoon’s bed that he sees it, through the slats of his bed, and drops to the floor.

It’s a wooden box stashed under there, around the size of his forearm, and he nearly drops it the moment he picks it up. It’s humming with energy, not unlike how the lightsaber crystals felt when Taekwoon gave them to him. Taekwoon had told him that meant that the crystals had chosen him, that the same thing happens to every Jedi when they go to Ilum (which he found quite hard to believe, considering he isn’t even a Jedi), but it doesn’t make sense that this box would be giving off that aura. He quickly sees why when he opens the lid, though, and brings the box closer to his face, his eyes wide.

It’s a lightsaber lying in there, covered in dust. The hilt is engraved with a similar swirly pattern as Taekwoon’s, although the design is considerably different; if Taekwoon’s two lightsabers are siblings, then this looks like a cousin. It can’t be Hongbin’s, because Hongbin only has one lightsaber and he is currently using it on the planet below. It’s not Taekwoon’s. He has no idea whose it could be, and wonderingly reaches out to wrap his hand around it—and gasps, his eyes rolling back in his head.

 _“Darth Kol,”_ the Sith growls. _“Rise, and take your seat on the Dark Council.”_

The figure turns and looks straight through Sanghyuk, his arms spread wide, and a chill runs down Sanghyuk’s spine. It’s Jaehwan standing there, looking imposing in armour that just screams _Sith_. As Sanghyuk watches, Jaehwan clambers the stairs to sit at one of the huge chairs that are arranged in a loose semicircle around a table. It looks just like the Jedi Council except, well, dark, and he clenches his fists.

Before he can say anything, though, the scene shifts, and he realises with horror what he’s looking at: Tython, although it’s barely recognisable. The grounds in front of the Temple are littered with pockmarks from explosions, and the Temple itself has caved in partially; blue and green lightsabers are clashing with red no matter where he looks, and when he turns, Jaehwan is behind him, lightsaber drawn and eyes dark. It’s then that he realises he’s looking at the future, although he isn’t sure why; the Force has not given him a vision in an age.

Jaehwan turns to look at him, and he closes his eyes reactively. When he opens them again, he’s on the space station above Hoth—he can see the planet below them, pale and ghostly. This is different, though; this time he’s lying down, and when he tries to move there’s an awful pain in his stomach. He’s weak, he’s _beyond_ weak, he’s on the verge of blacking out forever. He can feel the darkness calling to him, egging him on, encouraging him to slip backwards, but he can’t, he can’t. Taekwoon looks horrid; he’s lathered in sweat, his hair plastered to his face, and with a roar of anger he raises his lightsabers above his head, bringing them down on Jaehwan—

And Jaehwan slices through Taekwoon’s right arm so easily, so, _so_ easily—

Taekwoon screams, and Sanghyuk reaches for him, but the pain is too much—

Jaehwan raises his hand and blasts lightning at Taekwoon, and he arches and howls—

Sanghyuk can do nothing but watch as Taekwoon dies in front of his eyes, his life fading away, and when Jaehwan looks up at him and laughs he screams, a horrible animalistic sound that tears him in two—

When he comes to, he’s slumped on the floor in Taekwoon’s room, still clutching the lightsaber, and instinctively he gasps for air and feels his abdomen—but his armour is intact, and there’s no hole there. He is uninjured. It was just a vision, but at the same time he knows it wasn’t just a vision. This is the future if Jaehwan isn’t stopped, and when he looks back down at the lightsaber— _Jaehwan’s_ old lightsaber, he now knows—he has to repress a shudder. His legs are wobbly as he gets up and ignites the lightsaber, marvelling at the green blade. It’s a different colour to Hongbin’s, a lighter green, and when he gives it an experimental swing it feels right in his hand.

He sprints back to the airlock door and, without hesitation, without even giving pause to consider what his vision was showing him, plunges the lightsaber through the door with both hands, dragging it down slowly to create a hole. He’s seen Taekwoon do this, once before, and his cut was sharp and smooth. _This_ looks like Sanghyuk is learning to write again. But it does its job, and when he stands back and kicks at the hole he’s made, the metal falls through into the airlock and he smiles, triumphant. He is free.

//

Taekwoon sends a piece of the metal wall flying towards Jaehwan and narrows his eyes as Jaehwan leaps over it gracefully, landing in a crouch. It’s easy to lose track of time when battling like this, especially as they’re so easily matched—he has no idea how long they’ve been going at it for. Taekwoon has the advantage with his lightsabers, and when he’s so emotionless, so in tune with the Force, Jaehwan cannot get the upper hand no many how many bolts of lightning he shoots, no matter how many times he tries to Force push Taekwoon or throw him across the room. They know each other’s tricks, but Taekwoon’s picked up a few since they last met, and no matter what Jaehwan does he can’t land a blow.

He feels it when he’s throwing his lightsaber across the room, aiming at Jaehwan—who bends backwards underneath it easily, although Taekwoon’s sure it singes some of his hair. He only has time to turn before he sees—he sees Sanghyuk, leaping through the air with Jaehwan’s old lightsaber in his hand, face twisted into a snarl and aiming for Jaehwan’s heart.

“No!” he screams, right as Jaehwan raises his hand and fires a bolt of lightning at Sanghyuk, who sees it coming and tries to block it in time but is too slow. The lightning hits him and he drops to the floor like a stone, writhing painfully, his eyes screwed shut. Taekwoon moves to block it, but he’s off-balance, all his emotions rushing back, and Jaehwan Force pushes him away easily.

“What’s this?” Jaehwan takes a step closer to Sanghyuk, his eyes narrowed. “Your feelings give you away, Taekwoon. Your habit of forming attachments will be your downfall.”

Taekwoon rushes in, but Jaehwan raises a hand and shoots more lightning at Sanghyuk, who screams, the sound ripping through him. Taekwoon can feel his pain through the Force, can feel his fear, and feels anger clouding his mind. “Leave him _alone!”_ he roars, and with a snarl leaps in to engage Jaehwan, forcing him back, away from Sanghyuk, who is moaning on the ground behind him.

“Tried to keep your little boyfriend out of this, did you?” Jaehwan hisses as their lightsabers cross. “And he leapt in to save you. How _valiant.”_

Taekwoon headbutts him, and before he can recover swipes with another lightsaber, but Jaehwan groggily bars him. He knows that by attacking like this, using his anger, he’s walking a very thin line—as it is he can already feel the dark side creeping up on him, wrapping its fingers around his neck, sinking its teeth in. But he will not let Jaehwan take the one thing he loves from him. He will _not_. “You’re not even worthy to say his name,” he spits, breathing heavily.

Jaehwan doesn’t rush in to attack, though. He just backs away for the moment, twirling his lightsaber absentmindedly as he watches Taekwoon wrestle with himself. When he cocks his head to the side and speaks, it’s cold, calculated, the very opposite of the passionate, furious Sith he was moments ago. “I can see the dark side in you, Taekwoon,” he murmurs, his voice smooth and sultry. “Give in to it. Feel your anger. _Use_ it. Imagine what we could do, together.”

Those words cut Taekwoon so sharply he gasps, and just like that, all his doubts are gone. He is a Jedi. He has always been a Jedi, and he will always be a Jedi. Nothing can change that, not even his love for Sanghyuk, not even his misguided love for Jaehwan. He will not fall. “I do imagine what we could have done together, every day.” He closes his eyes and lets go of his emotions. Once again, the Force fills him, and he welcomes its presence. “But you fell, Jaehwan. You became a Sith. I will always be Jedi. And nothing can change the past, as much as I wish it were so.”

This time, when Jaehwan scowls and rushes in to attack him once more, he is ready.

//

Sanghyuk swims back to himself and sits up blearily, his head spinning. Taekwoon and Jaehwan are fighting again, their lightsabers just blurs of colour. Jaehwan is using Force lightning just as much as he is his lightsaber, and Sanghyuk shudders and looks down at his hands, surprised to see residual sparks between his fingers. He still has Jaehwan’s lightsaber clutched in his hand, unbelievably; when he flicks it on, the beam is steady, seemingly unaffected by the blast of lightning he was leveled with. With his other hand, his off hand, he grabs his blaster from his belt; it’s probably useless, but it won’t hurt to have handy.

His body is aching all over, but he staggers to his feet wearily, knowing he must do _something_. Taekwoon and Jaehwan are too easily matched, he can see; they each know what move the other is going to make before they make it, almost like they can read each other’s mind. But he will not let Taekwoon be defeated, he will not let his vision come true, so when he sees an opening—created by Jaehwan leaping to dodge one of Taekwoon’s lightsabers, and Taekwoon shoving him back in mid air using the Force—he gathers up all his courage and goes for it, taking two strides forward and raising the lightsaber over his head, leaping into the air and aiming for Jaehwan, who has his back to him, completely unaware—

Except Jaehwan sees him coming and turns, and before he can do anything Jaehwan lowers his lightsaber and stabs him straight through the gut, before kicking him in the chest and tossing him aside.

The pain is worse than anything he has ever felt in his entire life, and that includes the bolts of lightning Jaehwan just shot him with. It’s all he can do to curl up into a ball and keen, the agony ripping him apart, hands clutching his abdomen as he swims in and out of consciousness. When he moves his hands, he can see the hole, and his eyes roll back in his head as he moans helplessly.

He hears Taekwoon scream, an awful guttural sound, and when he looks up blearily he can see Taekwoon being forced back step by step as he sobs, barely managing to block Jaehwan’s furious hits, his lightsaber moving faster than Sanghyuk’s eyes can see. He knows he’s dying, he _knows_ it, he knows that the blackness swimming at the edge of his vision is more than just sleep calling to him. He wants to give in so badly, want to sleep forever, but instead he rolls onto his belly and stretches, reaching with the Force for Jaehwan’s old lightsaber, which is on the ground not far from him. If he can just—if he can just get his lightsaber, he can do something, he can do _anything_. Taekwoon won’t die. Taekwoon _can’t_ die. Sanghyuk isn’t too worried about himself now that death is wrapping her arms around him, but not Taekwoon, he won’t let Jaehwan take Taekwoon from him.

He sees it, then, and it happens in slow motion. He reaches out his hand, pulling with the Force, but he’s far too weak to have any effect, and his world swims as Taekwoon raises his lightsabers over his head with an angry roar. Sloppy, it’s _sloppy_ , and Jaehwan slices through Taekwoon’s right arm, just below the elbow, so easily. Sanghyuk breathes in to scream, but the pain is too great, and all he can do is wail as Taekwoon cries out, falling to his knees. His vision swims as Jaehwan raises his hand and blasts Taekwoon with lightning, the purple sparks lighting up the whole room with their macabre glow.

Time stops.

They’re dying.

He’s floating away, consciousness so hard to find, and Taekwoon is nearly gone, he can tell—from here he can see the whites of his eyes as he sways on his knees. Jaehwan raises his lightsaber above his head to make the killing blow, his face grim, serious. The red of the blade bleeds into Sanghyuk’s eyes. It’s all he sees.

They’re all dying.

Sanghyuk raises his hand and squeezes the trigger of his blaster once, twice, three times. That’s all he can manage, because the darkness is carrying him away, but he sees Jaehwan drop to the ground and smiles to himself.

He closes his eyes and lets go.

//

“Hyung,” Taekwoon sobs, pulling Jaehwan into his lap and touching his face with his good arm, the only arm he has left. “No, hyung, no, no, no…”

“Taekwoon,” Jaehwan whispers, and when he opens his eyes Taekwoon nearly blacks out. The yellow colour is gone. “Taekwoon, I’m scared.”

He’s crying, he realises absentmindedly. Oh. “I’ve got you,” he murmurs through sobs, brushing Jaehwan’s hair away from his forehead. He dares a glance down at Jaehwan’s abdomen and winces—Sanghyuk’s blasters have torn a huge hole in his stomach, and when Taekwoon presses a hand there it comes back sticky with blood. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he says, even though they both know it’s a lie.

“I’m sorry,” Jaehwan mutters, and Taekwoon can see he’s crying, too, his brown eyes glinting with tears. He clutches at Taekwoon desperately, and when Taekwoon touches the Force he can see that the dark side is nowhere to be found—Jaehwan is glowing brighter than he ever has. “I’m scared. I’m so scared. I didn’t mean… for this.”

“Shh.” Taekwoon presses a kiss to Jaehwan’s forehead and tugs him closer. He can feel Jaehwan slipping away in his arms and doesn’t know what to do. So much death, always plaguing him. Will it ever end? “It’s okay, hyung. I forgive you.”

“...so much pain…” Jaehwan whispers, and Taekwoon doesn’t know if he’s talking about himself, or something else. “...fuck this planet…”

Taekwoon barks a cough of laughter at that, which sends pains all up and down his—his stump, which he is refusing to look at. When he glances over at Sanghyuk, he can see that he’s lying face-down, motionless, and his heart stops in his chest. “Fuck ice planets. I’m never going to another one as long as I live,” he agrees through the tears, touching Jaehwan’s face like he’s trying to memorise it.

Jaehwan smiles, and it’s a beautiful smile, one that’s unmarred by his Sith eyes or his horrible attitude. Taekwoon always knew there was good in him. He just wishes this didn’t have to be the thing that brought it out. “Should… go to a desert planet. Tatooine, maybe.”

Taekwoon snorts, but the tears are blurring his vision now. Jaehwan is dying. He can’t pretend otherwise, as much as he’d love to, but his wounds are just too great and he’s bleeding out in Taekwoon’s arms. How utterly cruel of the universe, to give him back his best friend, his brother, and then rip him away in the same breath. “Yeah, I hear it’s nice this time of year.” He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against Jaehwan’s. “I love you, hyung.”

Jaehwan’s eyes flutter shut. “I know… hyung.”

The use of the nickname startles Taekwoon into silence, and it’s then that he feels the last of Jaehwan’s life force slip away, and he goes limp in Taekwoon’s arms. When he looks up, his vision blurred with tears, he can see that night is falling over the planet, half of it blanketed in darkness. Sanghyuk is crumpled on the floor off to his right. Jaehwan is dead in his arms. He has so little left to live for, now.

“There is no death, there is the Force,” he mumbles to himself through sobs, clinging to Jaehwan desperately. “There is no death, there is the Force. There is no death, there is the Force. There is no death, there is the Force. There is no death, there is the Force…”

It’s over.


	9. Epilogue

**_3642 BBY_ **  
**_11 years since the Treaty of Coruscant_ **  
**_The outbreak of the Galactic War_ **

Sanghyuk only misses Taekwoon’s lightsaber by accident.

Okay, so it’s a battlefield, and sometimes lightsabers go awry. But he doesn’t know how many times he’s talked to Taekwoon about this. It’s not that big a request to ask your boyfriend to stop throwing his fucking lightsabers away like they’re boomerangs, especially when Sanghyuk tends to be right next to Taekwoon, or at his back, or generally in the area to be sliced and diced by said awry lightsaber. He’s already been impaled once, and it wasn’t very fun—he’d kind of like to avoid that happening again. But he only ducks because he thought he’d seen a credit chip on the ground, and it’s then that he hears the whizz of Taekwoon’s lightsaber go sailing over his head.

“How many times?” he mutters as they go back to back. There’s Sith _everywhere_ , but they don’t seem to paying too much attention to them; they get the bulk of the Imperial army instead, which is much easier to deal with. “I mean, come on.”

“Sorry, nau’kara,” Taekwoon replies, picking up one trooper with the Force and swinging him in a circle so he takes out ten others. He doesn’t sound sorry at all, though.

“Whatever.” Sanghyuk looks back over his shoulder and winks at Taekwoon before peeling away.

This particular battle has been going on for longer than he can remember; he seems to vaguely recall it started in the middle of the night, and considering the sun is setting again, he thinks that maybe the Imperials should have given up by now, seeing as they haven’t gained any ground. They’re on some planet he can barely remember the name of—Corellia, that’s it. It was invaded by the Empire a week ago, but the Republic is holding their own, and he’s sure it won’t be much longer before the endless waves stop. He kneels behind some rubble—a casualty of the heavy bombings is that the buildings in this sector of the city are nearly all destroyed by now—and pops his head over to take out two soldiers in quick succession before ducking as a volley of return shots come his way.

“You,” a voice booms over his shoulder, and he turns back in surprise.

There’s a Sith standing there, one he doesn’t recognise. He’s a huge hulk of a man, towering over Sanghyuk easily, which isn’t helped by the fact that he’s wearing armour that has spikes all over it. His lightsaber dangles from his hand as he glares at Sanghyuk and points. “I know you. Sith-slayer.”

Sanghyuk rolls his eyes and stands up. It’s a stupid nickname, in his opinion. He certainly hadn’t asked for it. But word of Jaehwan’s death, and his continuing successes on the battlefield, had gotten around, and before he knew it he was the Sith-slayer with a bounty on his head. He hardly thinks he deserves it, but it’s kind of amusing. The Sith grins, and raises his lightsaber, a challenge.

The bulky ones are always easy. It’s no challenge for him to fire a quick succession of shots at him, which the Sith redirects with his lightsaber easily, and then spring up on a piece of nearby rubble to draw his lightsaber and drive it through the Sith’s head, sending him crumpling to the floor, dead. They never expect him to _use_ the damn thing.

It had been a real battle for him to keep it. After Jaehwan’s funeral pyre was lit, Taekwoon had sat there until it was nothing but ash, clutching Jaehwan’s Jedi lightsaber and meditating the entire time (Sanghyuk couldn’t attend because he was in a bacta tank. In fact, he’d spent a week in there, although he doesn’t remember a thing). When Satele suggested he destroy the lightsaber, Taekwoon refused, and gave it to Sanghyuk the moment he was well enough to hold a weapon. Satele had kicked up a fuss, considering Sanghyuk isn’t a Jedi (and has no desire to become one) but in the end he’d won and got to keep it. He doesn’t use it that often, really; he’s absolutely shit at duels and gets steamrolled very easily. But it’s good for catching people off-guard, and for use in close combat, so he keeps it around for that reason. Besides, it feels right in his hands, just as right as his blasters do, and he likes to think that Jaehwan’s crystal picked him for a reason.

His holocom beeps as he takes cover again, and he fishes it from his belt and presses the button to accept the call, vaguely irritated. Wonshik appears, tinged in blue and looking worse for wear, his armour dented and dingy and with scorch marks all over it. “Sand-rat? You there?” he yells.

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“I’m getting a report on troops withdrawing from your position, Sith included. Looks like you’re in the clear for now. You’ll be needed on the other side of the planet soon, though, so get some rest and get ready to head back into battle.”

Sanghyuk tries to keep the smile off his face, but he can’t. “Yessir,” he barks, grinning widely. “You know, I think being a commander suits you. I never thought you’d switch sides, though.”

“Just because I was a bounty hunter doesn’t mean I was on the Empire’s side.” Wonshik flips Sanghyuk off through the holocom, much to Sanghyuk’s amusement. “I’ll see you back here soon.”

This time, when Sanghyuk pops his head out of cover, he can see that Wonshik’s report is correct—the numbers have been greatly thinned, and all he can see is Taekwoon and a Sith going at it furiously in the middle of the street, bodies littered all around their feet. Even from here, Sanghyuk can see the sunlight glinting off Taekwoon’s black metal arm, which still makes him feel a bit funny, sometimes—it’s such a contrast to Taekwoon, who is so warm and loving, that whenever he feels it it throws him off a little bit. But they each have their remnants from the battle with Jaehwan; Taekwoon has his arm, and Sanghyuk has the round scar on his belly, and Hongbin…

“There you are,” Hongbin says from behind him, and Sanghyuk jumps a foot in the air, smacking him on the chest.

Hongbin had come out of the battle with Hakyeon relatively unscathed—unlike the other two, his only reminder is a new scar on his face, from his forehead to the corner of his mouth, thanks to Hakyeon’s lightsaber. In fact, Hongbin’s really the only reason Sanghyuk survived that day; once he had killed Hakyeon—he likes to say it was easy, but Sanghyuk knows the truth—he called Wonshik, of all people, who had come to collect him. They’d then found their way to the space station, to find Taekwoon passed out with Jaehwan’s body in his arms, and Sanghyuk barely clinging to life somewhere behind them. How he hadn’t died in that time he’s not entirely sure. Taekwoon likes to say Jaehwan died so Sanghyuk could live, but he doesn’t believe that. Jaehwan died because Sanghyuk shot him full of holes, not because of any Force mumbo-jumbo.

“Don’t scare me like that!” Sanghyuk chides as he stands up and stretches, eyeing the street as Taekwoon finishes off the Sith and sheaths his lightsabers, making his way towards them. “I swear, I tell you two things and it just goes in one ear and out the other.”

“Oh, like all those times Master Taekwoon tells you _not_ to rush headlong into battle, but then you go and do it anyway?” Hongbin slings an arm around his shoulder as they walk, meeting Taekwoon halfway.

“Fuck off,” Sanghyuk mutters, elbowing Hongbin in the side so he can bound over to Taekwoon and fling his arms around his neck. They’d sort of given up keeping the relationship secret in front of Hongbin, since the first thing Sanghyuk did when he opened his eyes was yank Taekwoon in for a kiss, and Hongbin and Satele had been standing _right there_. It’s been a year and a few months since then, and while he can tell that Satele doesn’t approve, Hongbin seems to be incredibly blasé about the entire thing. “We’ve been summoned. Commander Wonshik wants us back at base.”

Taekwoon smiles and presses a gentle kiss to Sanghyuk’s lips before wrapping an arm around his waist. “Really? I suppose we must go, then. It would be rude to disobey Commander Wonshik.”

Sanghyuk just rolls his eyes glumly as they pick their way over the bodies littered around to make their way back towards the transports. He never quite gets used to all this death, and he certainly doesn’t enjoy taking lives, but he’s spookily good at it and the Republic needs him, so he does his duty. “When the hell are we going to retire? I want to go somewhere warm. Every planet this war takes us to is _cold.”_

“I hear Tatooine is nice at this time of year,” Taekwoon murmurs, and Hongbin snorts.

Sanghyuk reaches for Taekwoon’s hand, not even caring that he gets the metal one, and links their fingers together. “Yeah, nice try. Not happening. There are other desert planets, you know.”

“We have to win this war first,” Hongbin reminds him.

Ah, the war. Some days Sanghyuk thinks it’s impossible to win, that they are up against such an overwhelming force that there’s no way they will be able to come out on top… But then other days he’s filled with such hope he’s bursting at the seams with it, because how can they _not_ win, after everything they’ve been through?

Sanghyuk squeezes Taekwoon’s metal hand, smiles at Hongbin, and realises today is one of those days of hope. “With Commander Wonshik at the helm? How could we lose?” He grins widely at the other two, practically skipping as they approach one of the taxis, which looks more than a little worse for wear.

They let Hongbin drive, which means they get to snuggle up in the back seat, and Sanghyuk buries his head in the crook of Taekwoon’s neck and closes his eyes and just _exists_. He often forgets to do that in this stupid war. It’s all too easy for him to take advantage of the precious things he has, although he never quite takes advantage of Taekwoon—he will always appreciate him, no matter what. Jaehwan’s death had broken Taekwoon for a while, even though he knew it was an inevitability, but they had moved through it together. Sanghyuk knows that Taekwoon still sees Jaehwan’s face sometimes when he closes his eyes, but that’s okay. He himself still has nightmares about that day, although the Force seems to have given him a reprieve from the visions, for now.

Peace is a hard thing to come by these days, but this is where Sanghyuk feels it most: in the quiet moments, when Taekwoon holds him, and tells him he loves him. That’s all he needs, really. Everything else pales in the face of it.

He closes his eyes and snuggles closer to Taekwoon, smiling as he presses a soft kiss to his forehead. _Yes_.

This is all he needs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woohoo, it's done!! Thank you for coming on this journey with me, I hope you had a lot of fun reading the crap that my brain spews up (and I'm sorry for Jaehwan and Hakyeon dying lol). Special thanks go to Oli and Yezi for being my cheerleaders, I don't know how I would cope without y'all. As always, thanks for reading! ♡
> 
> Fun fact about Jaehwan's Darth name—I asked Yezi to come up with something cool sounding in Korean, and this is what she said:  
>  _곯다 is a verb that usually describes that something is spoiled or rotten, pronounced more or less like "golt-da", but it can also be used as a metaphor like someone is deeply hurt inside/their heart so they're "rotting away". And there's a homonym that describes a bowl that is not completely full—so it's like Jaehwan's good side has "rot" for him to become this Sith, but it's not necessarily a good thing for him because it's eating away at him kind of? And so he's never completely filled/satisfied so he's trying to eliminate his past as a Jedi."_


End file.
